Running head- LESSON REFLECTION 1

Lesson Reflection1 Ashley Miller Indian Fields Elementary School Terri Wells

Running head- LESSON REFLECTION 1 For my first field lesson, I taught a geometry lesson on shapes based on the book

Grandfather Tang by Ann Tompert. This was an interactive math read aloud lesson with hands on small group work that was based on the reading. This lesson was taught on Thursday, March 13th 2014 in Mrs. Wells first grade class during the first part of their school day. The time of this lesson was about 9:15 am to 9:45 am. This really worked in my favor, since the students were very attentive at this time of the day. My objectives for this math lesson were for students to be able to identify different shapes and become familiar with the parts of the tangram and for the students to be able to comprehend the story Grandfather Tang by Ann Tompert while creating the animals from this story with their own tangrams. In my opinion, the objectives for this lesson were met, but the materials I had to work with didnt really aid the students work as much as I had hoped they would. I also felt that the lesson was a little crunched for time, so I couldnt go into as much detail as I had hoped Id be able to. Since this was the first day that the class was working with shapes in a while, I definitely feel like more time was needed for the introduction of this lesson, but I didnt really have that. For example, I felt as though the students were able to identify the different shapes or tangrams from the story, but if we were able to have more time to explain them before the story or lesson began and discuss them more thoroughly, I feel like they wouldve had an even better understanding of more difficult shapes like the rhombus or hexagon. Another characteristic of this lesson that made this the small group activity challenging for the students was that the tangrams we had to work with were fairly smaller than normal. For this lesson, I printed out outlines of the different tangrams animals from the story for the students to use as a guide for creating them on their own, but the size of their personal tangrams made this hard because they didnt exactly resemble my images. This mightve been less of a challenge if I

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taught this lesson to students a year or two older than my first graders, but they personally didnt really comprehend why their picture didnt look exactly the same as the example. After thinking about it for a little, Mrs. Wells and I encouraged the students to try and use more than one of the same shapes to fit the larger outline of the images I provided for them, and this seemed to really help. The students really enjoyed experimenting with this new plan and learned a lot from it! They were constantly calling me over to see how they were able to solve the problem. This lesson not only taught them the basics of shapes and tangram pieces, but it also taught them that sometimes we need to use our imaginations in math to solve problems that may occur- like the one we dealt with during this activity. I wouldnt really consider this portion of the lesson to be a downfall, but it was definitely something that I learned from and was able to improvise with at the time. This is definitely something I will carry with me into the future. For this being the first math lesson Ive ever taught, I think it succeeded in many ways, but it also had some room for improvement. I found the interactive read aloud to be very successful because the students were really engaged in the story and describing the shapes they saw throughout the book. For example, when the picture of the fish came up and the class recognized the animal, they instantly finished my sentence and called out what they saw. As soon as they were focused on this image, I asked them to name some tangram shapes that the fish was made up of. It was such a great feeling to see a bunch of little hands shoot up to tell me that they saw triangles, squares, and rhombuses on that page- and this was even before we talked about the different shapes individually. The class was also really engaged and entertained while working with the tangrams. After working on this activity for a while, it was time to clean up and they all looked as though they were too hooked to stop.

Running head- LESSON REFLECTION 1 One way that I think I couldve improved this lesson was to have more printed versions of the tangram animals for the kids to reference as guides when trying to make them on their own. I originally printed out two per table, so that groups of three children could reference one sheet at a time, but I think it wouldve been helpful to have more at each table or one for each child. The students in Mrs. Wells class work at very different paces, so I think working on their

own individual tangram animals wouldve worked better for this type of lesson. If I were to teach this lesson again in the future, I would definitely plan on bringing extra tangram animal reference sheets for this activity so the students could work individually and at a pace that was easier for them to fully comprehend the lesson. If I taught this lesson in my own classroom, I would make sure that my next lesson stayed within the shape unit. This read aloud lesson could be a great introduction to shapes and lead into lessons on more difficult tangram activities, 3D shapes, or comparing and contrasting the different properties of both two dimensional and three dimensional shapes. I think it would be really interesting to encourage the students to try and create their own pictures with tangram pieces, as well. This lesson could be the start of many exciting lessons and activities on shapes in first grade or even kindergarten. Overall, teaching my first math lesson really taught me a lot. I really enjoyed being able to reflect on my work and learn from my own personal experiences. Not only did this lesson teach me what the pros and cons were of my own lesson planning, but I strongly feel like it helped me get a better idea of classroom management (ways to keep the students engaged in the lesson), as well as the transitions necessary between different parts of a lesson (moving from the interactive read aloud to the group/individual work at the tables). I am really looking forward to applying what Ive learned from my first lesson to my future lessons in the field this semester.