Sarah Thomas

CEDF 774
Professor Debbie Sonu
Fall 2016
Observation 2 Lesson Reflection
Lesson Preparation
I have struggled with teaching math since I began this program. Last year I taught
two math lessons, the first of which was a complete disaster and the second was fairly
successful (or at the very least, a vast improvement on the first). I still have a great deal
of anxiety about teaching math but I know that it is something I must attack head-on. The
only way to overcome this fear is to challenge myself and keep trying. So for my second
observed lesson in class 4-408, I decided to teach a math lesson on multiplying two 2digit numbers.
I have observed very little math instruction in the classroom so far this year, and
what I had observed prior to planning this lesson was very mechanical and teachercentered with little participation from the students or explanation of underlying concepts.
The instruction I was seeing was a stark contrast with what I am currently learning in my
math methods course. I knew I wanted to practice some of the ideas and activities
discussed in that class in class 4-408. I designed my lesson to begin with a number talk
something we have discussed in the methods coursewith the hopes of hooking the
students and engaging them immediately. I wanted the lesson to start out with the kids
constructing their own learning rather than me as the teacher directly imparting
knowledge onto them. A long those same lines, I incorporated turn and talks and partner
work to provide an opportunity for the students to learn from each other.
During & After the Lesson
Overall, this was not a successful lesson. Many of the students did not understand
what I was trying to teach (the distributive property of multiplication and breaking 2-digit
numbers up by place value, finding the partial products and then adding them to find the

final answer). I also lost control of the class and constantly found myself stopping to tell
them to be quiet, especially when other students were participating. Towards the end I
simply had run out of ways to try to explain the concept and several boys in the class
called me out on it and were pretty rude to me. I did not even get to the partner work,
discussion or exit ticket in my lesson plan. My cooperating teacher Mrs. Chow had to
step in and say that the class would revisit the topic later that day. In the moment I
thought that if she hadnt saved me, I wouldnt have known what to do. Upon reflection,
however, I think that if this was my own class, I would have actually stopped the lesson
and facilitated a discussion about classroom behavior, norms, and being respectful to
each other and the teacher.
In terms of the content and delivery of the lesson itself, there are several things I
would change:
Materials the chart paper I used was difficult for students to see. In the future, I
would use the smartboard instead.
The opening of the lesson. Students had difficulty doing the problem and most of
them did the traditional algorithm. To address this, I would model the problem
much more clearly and change my talking points (see revised lesson plan).
In my teaching in general, I want to work on breaking things down more clearly
for students. In terms of this lesson, instead of having the solution to the guided
practice problem already written (I did this to save time), I would go through it
with them and ask for input as I solved.
Classroom management/Teacher-student interaction: As discussed with Professor
Sonu, there were multiple times during the lesson where I focused too much on
one or two students who were offering solutions or asking questions. In the
process, I lost most of the class. In future lessons, instead of focusing so intently
on those students, I will try to take what they are saying and address it back to the
whole class so that the other students remain engaged. This still seems very
abstract to me, but hopefully the more teaching I do, the more it will fall into
place.
It is important that I am very clear about the purpose of the lesson and that I
express its purpose and relevance. For example, when Mrs. Chow re-taught the
lesson, she reminded the students that they have been learning different ways to

multiply and that this is important for when they are asked to explain their
thinking in math. The algorithm isnt bad, she said, but you need to know how to
explain the algorithm and why it works and these other methods enable you to do
that.