Reflection

Vertical Dot Addition

Reflection

The lesson for this learning experience was designed for my first student teaching placement in September of 2007 at Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School in Cheektowaga, New York. One of my first obligations at this school was to start teaching all lessons in Mathematics. In this district first grade students begin with a unit on addition. This lesson was designed to be taught during the 3rd week of this unit.

The lesson was then extensively broken down and written into a learning experience for my college class “Teaching to the Standards” in October 2007. After writing the learning experience, it was peer reviewed using the New York State Academy for Teaching and Learning peer review protocol. This specific learning experience was peer reviewed by my classmates on October 18, 2007 at Daemen College. “Does my learning experience follow the congruency table?” was the focus question of the peer review. Not only was I assured that yes my congruency table followed the learning experience, but also I received many warm and cool comments. I used both types of comments to change pieces of this learning experience to make it a better overall lesson for the students. One warm comment I received was that “using dot cards in your lesson was just a lot of fun!” Being able to see that my peers felt that this lesson was fun and an overall good lesson made me more comfortable with receiving their cool comments to make this a better lesson.

During the peer review process some of the feedback I received helped better my learning experience. Some suggestions which I embedded into my learning experience are as follows. First, I added a pretest that students will take prior to the lesson. Once I am aware of what information and skills students have, I can better adapt the lessons to meet their specific needs. Differentiating the lesson will also make it more interesting for each student, which in turn will keep them on task and reduce behavior management issues that may otherwise arise. Following this, for an extension activity, I provided students an option of either working with a partner to practice their vertical addition sentences or allowing students to use the computer to play a game covering this topic. Using computer games was a great way that I was able to integrate technology into this lesson and was an idea which was provided during the peer review.

Drafting this learning experience and then revising it once it was reviewed was a long and time-consuming process. However, the time and energy devoted to this experience was well spent and it will benefit students in the future who may be engaged in it. The hard work put into this, to me, was well worth the time because even before it was peer reviewed and changed the students who were taught the lesson enjoyed it. One student even said “Miss Sobieraj, this is almost like a game.” From that child, I know that the lesson was engaging and fun. It is my belief that if students can have fun with what is being taught, they do not even realize they are learning when in reality that is exactly what they are doing! Because this lesson was fun for the students, it made it very easy for the students to reach the performance indicators and objectives I set for them. Meeting the objectives was a necessary step for these students. Not only will they be using vertical addition later in the year and in later grades, but this is a skill that students will need outside of school as well. They may use this skill when figuring out bills, balancing a checking account, or possibly adding up how much of something else they have. My hope is that when they get to a point in their life where they use vertical addition, they do so successfully and at the same time think back to the dot cards and the fun they had!

The last piece of working on this learning experience is putting it online. I hope that this is just one step in putting together an online portfolio. I would like to thank Mr. Arnold and Jane Ross for their support in doing this. Without their help, being able to share my learning experience with others in this fashion would be a hope rather than a reality. I am optimistic that by posting this learning experience online, I am able to do two things. First, I hope it helps other students at Daemen College taking the Teaching to the Standards class have an understanding of what is expected of them and what they need to do well in the course. Also, I hope to share with others the type of teacher I am and how a lesson in my classroom would look.

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