Danielson Domain 3 is instruction. Instruction includes a multitude of things.

It is

not simply just teaching a lesson. It includes the planning of the lesson, the teaching

of the lesson, and reflecting on the results of the lesson. Within the lesson itself, it is

important to communicate with students, engage their learning and participation with

questions and discussions, and be able to respond in the moment and be flexible

based on the assessment of the students during the lessons.

Recently I taught a lesson on inverse operations, the relationship of addition and

subtraction and the relationship of multiplication and division. This was a

combination of two different lessons within the curriculum required by my school. To

plan for the lesson, I reviewed both lessons within the curriculum and with the entire

sixth-grade mathematics team came up with the questions we decided we must do

within the lesson and the ones we could do if time permitted. After this meeting, I

created the PowerPoint I use in my lesson to keep the lesson flowing. I made sure to

add page numbers on my slides for the students to reference as we were skipping

around through two different lessons and not following the order of the book. This is

an important detail as most of the time we go in the order of the book. I also created

a separate exit ticket than the two provided in the book as I wanted to assess the

lesson as a whole at the end of the lesson.

When it came time to teach the lesson, communication of the expectations was

vital. Normally our lessons are in a specific order and most of the expectations about

the progression of the lessons is already known by my students. However, because

this lesson was a combination of two lesson, I communicated with my students that it

was important to not tr to skip ahead as we were not following the book for this
lesson. As the lesson progressed, I had all of the page numbers on each slide and

also spoke them as we went from slide to slide and moved around within the book

pages. To start the lesson, I had the students get out their individual white boards I

created for them to be able to draw and erase diagrams easily as we used them in

the lesson. My students love using the whiteboards and as I walked around the room

as they were using them I could see they were actively engaged in that activity and I

was able to individually assess their understanding as I walked around and also as I

had them hold their whiteboards up to show me their work at different points

throughout the lesson. Throughout the lesson, I not only asked questions about the

understanding of what we were doing with the tape diagrams, but also asked my

students to make predictions on problems before we did some of them. While my

original plan was to have my students use the whiteboards throughout the entire

lesson to make their tape diagrams, I could tell some students just needed to get up

and move around or I was going to lose their attention.

I improvised within the lesson and had students in groups get up and make tape

diagrams with the desks. The students loved moving the desks around and adding

and subtracting them from the diagrams. I immediately saw students that were on

the verge of zoning out get involved in the lesson again. There was one large

problem with this change in the lesson and that was it was extremely loud, and the

classroom does not have real walls on the sides, just dividers. After my class being

so loud with, I made sure to set a voice level expectation during this exercise for the

rest of my classes that day prior to letting them engage in the activity of moving the

desks.
 With the use of a PowerPoint displayed via my smartboard, a timer shows up on

my computer and starts as soon as I move from the first slide to the second slide.

This helps me with my pacing of the lesson because I can see how long the lesson

is taking as I am teaching it. Due to the change in activity and having the students

get up and move the desks around as part of the lesson, I only did the problems that

were designated as must do and not the ones designated as could do to stay on

track with the timing of the lesson.

While I informally assessed my students as the lessons was progressing and

helped those in the moment that I saw not understanding the problems as we were

working on them, I also use an exit ticket to assess all the students individually at the

close of the lesson portion of my class. As the students completed the exit ticket and

handed them in to me prior to them getting on computers for a mathematics

enrichment program for the enrichment portion of the class, I reviewed the exit

tickets to assess my students on the lesson. This was a very successful lesson and

the majority of my students answered 100% correctly all the questions on the exit

ticket. Only one student in two of my classes answered something incorrectly.

Reviewing the exit tickets immediately, allowed me to pull these students during the

enrichment period to review their misunderstandings within the lessons with them

individually.

Not all of my lessons are this successful. Most are not this successful when I

review the exit tickets. This made me analyze the lesson further to understand what

it was that was so different about this lesson than other lessons. Why this lesson

was more successful was a combination of things. First, the lesson topic is an easier
topic for students which was why I was able to combine two lessons together within

the curriculum. Another reason, I believe the lesson was so successful was the use

of whiteboards; my students like being able to draw the math out on them and I am

able to assess all of my students quickly when using them. One of the biggest

reasons I think this lesson was so successful was my last-minute change within the

lesson to have my students get up and move around and use the desks in the

classroom to solve their math problems. This was something that surprised them,

but also got them energized and move into the lesson. It was probably the biggest

factor in the success of the lesson and one I plan to utilize again and one I shared

with the rest of my sixth-grade mathematics team.