Thimmel 1 Justine Thimmel Dr.

Bulgar ELD 375 November 2, 2013 Observation of Teaching and Learning To teach any lesson, you have to have a well thought out plan, differentiation techniques, confidence, and hope in your children. Someone from the outside should be able to understand what the teacher is trying to accomplish. Lucky for me, I had the opportunity to learn from a teaching professional as to how she goes about her lesson planning, and then watched how her lesson went, and then asked how she felt the lesson went. I also during this report make an impression on how the students reacted to the lesson. Miss Refsin has been doing the lesson that both Miss Knott and I interviewed her for, since she began teaching over 20 years ago. Miss Refsin is very passionate about what she does in every aspect of the classroom, so lesson planning is very important to her. The lesson that we interviewed Miss Refsin on was her pumpkin seeds lesson. In this lesson, students began by going over estimation and what it is good mathematicians do when they are estimating. They also practiced how to make a plan and to work together. What Miss Refsin wanted to gain from this lesson was to have the students learn how to estimate and learn how their estimation can determine future outcomes. They were also able to learn how to measure the circumference of the pumpkin by using yarn. She planned this activity by preparing the students pumpkin packet herself. She planned out the timing for her lesson by seeing how long each part of the lesson would be. When she first did the lesson years ago she wasnt sure about how long, but over time has improved and learned how long each section would take. She knew how much time

Thimmel 2 to give the children to make their original estimations, how much time she needed to model how to measure each part of the pumpkin, when to prepare the students desks for the counting of the seeds, how much time needed for the students to count the seeds, and how much time to go over their results. She has every part of her lesson planned out and how long each part is except for the last part of her lesson, which is the going over of the results. She got this lesson from her mentor when she was first teaching in Wicoff. What Miss Refsin actually had planned for this lesson was to begin with what estimation is, how to make estimations, and why it is important for mathematicians to make estimations. She then gave her students at their desk with the packet that she made for them. She began to go over the packet and then gave her students about 15 to 20 minutes to come up with their results. Then she called on the students to ask about how they worked with their estimations and how to next actually measure each part of the pumpkin. While Miss Refsin had the students on the rug, Mrs. Bailin, the teacher aide, began to set up the desk for the seed counting. This took about 5 to 10 minutes. The students then went back to their groups, made a plan as to how to count the seeds, and began counting the seeds using tens frames. This part took about 45 minutes. After they finished and Miss Refsin checked their work, they compiled their results in their packets and gathered back on the rug to go over all of their results. This took approximately 10 to 15 minutes. After the interview, Miss Knott and I then got to observe the lesson to see how the students interact and work with this lesson, we each chose different groups of students. The students began right away, anxious and excited to be working with a new math concept. Each student in my group came up with their own ideas except for one

Thimmel 3 child. She normally struggles with mathematics and tries to use others to help her. In this lesson, having the this student work with other students helped her out because the students came up with all of their own estimations, but shared their conclusions and gave reasons as to why they estimated what they did. The struggling student then took what the other students were saying and came up with her own conclusion. While working on estimating, the math talk in my group was interesting. They used all of the units of measure properly. They discussed how they came up with their answers they used some math concepts of adding what they already knew. For example, one student estimated that the circumference of the pumpkin was going to be 20 inches because there were 20 lines on the pumpkin. Another student estimated that the pumpkin weighed as much as three mini pumpkins combined. When they moved onto the second part of the lesson of measuring the different parts of the pumpkin, they really worked together. They had some problems starting off because the boys in the group wanted to do everything and have the girls sit back and watch, but the feisty girls were not having it. Once that was resolved, they worked together nicely. The conversation during this talk was similar to the first part, regarding the units of measurement. When they solved the measurements of each part of the pumpkin, some students could not believe how far off their estimations were. One student swore that the pumpkin weighed 10 pounds when in fact it only weighed three. Other parts of their estimations allowed some students to make connections to the actual answer and their estimation. The information that they found showed them how their estimation reflected their actual results. Then the last part of the lesson with counting the pumpkin seeds, the students

Thimmel 4 first started off planning what each students job were going to be. This allowed for them to organize their work process and begin counting right away. Two students counted the seeds, two separated the seeds, and one student dug out the seeds and pulp. The conversation during this part was mostly counting and grouping their numbers. They worked together counting the seeds in their tens tables and filling up their hundred sheet. Their estimation of how many sheets they needed at first was off but once they saw how many seeds were coming out, they guessed that they would need three sheets instead of one. After they finished up counting, they all double-checked the seeds to make sure that their seed count was definitely 376 seeds. The lesson took place in the classroom at the students desk while working, and then on the rug while Miss Refsin explained parts of the lesson. Having the students work at their desks allowed them to have enough room for each part of the lesson. The lesson went smoothly just like Miss Refsin had expected. Time at the end was cutting close, but this she knew prior. She never had enough time to fully go over all of the groups results because of how much time the students took counting all of the seeds. Miss Refsin also knew that the students estimations were going to be off. She knew this because she has done this lesson so many times and she knew that the students always under estimate the amount of pumpkin seeds and over estimate the circumference and weight of the pumpkin. She helped guide them with their estimations by having them fill out a section underneath the estimations with their actual answers of how much the students estimations were either over, under, or if their estimation was perfect. In the final part of this report, Miss Knott and I interviewed Miss Refsin again to understand how her planning and implementation of her lesson affected how her lesson

Thimmel 5 actually went. She thought the lesson succeeded in a number of aspects. The students were engaged in every part of the lesson, they used their new math concept in the right way, they worked together and made a plan when it came to both measuring the pumpkin and counting the pumpkin seeds. The students also utilized the tens tables correctly which allowed them to organize their counting of the seeds. Miss Refsin knows she is not perfect and knew that her lesson did have one problem. The only trouble the lesson ran into was time. Miss Refsin had planned the timing according to how the lesson had worked in the past. However, doing this lesson, you never really know how long exactly the students are going to take counting the seeds. Some groups worked together quickly, some take a little more time planning, and some may be disorganized. The most important part was that the students finished the majority of what they had to get done. Miss Refsin ran out of time when she was going over the results. She squeezed in as much as she could, but she knew she was not going to be able to go over every part, which she was okay with. Having helpers for this lesson really helped her out with the time management. Miss Refsin felt that her students showed developmental skills and understood what she had as her objective, which was having them understand estimation. The students in this lesson really showed some developmental skills throughout the whole process. They were able to grasp how to estimate and see for themselves how estimation relates to their actual measurements. They also were able to plan and use the tens tables to help with their organization. I feel that they did understand what Miss Refsin was teaching. Her objective was clear and concise and her plan was well thought out. Her students were taught the objectives of using estimation and then used their own

Thimmel 6 mathematical skills to figure out how estimation works. Since Miss Refsin has done this lesson since she began teaching, she has worked out most of the lessons glitches. When she first did this lesson, she did it by herself. Once she realized that it would be a lot easier to have some help, she utilized the parent helpers of her class. She was lucky this year because she has Mrs. Bailin, Miss Knott, and myself to help her out. Time at the end of the lesson may always be an issue, but this is not much of a concern for her. In doing this field report, I have seen a well thought out, organized, and planned teacher execute a lesson almost perfectly in my eyes since she has had many years to do this lesson. The most important aspect that I learned about in lesson planning is that you really have to have a plan. Seeing how Miss Refsin came up with her lesson and how she planned every minute allowed me to see the importance of planning and how it can really affect how a lesson goes. In the future, I will strive to construct lessons similar to Miss Refsin in that I will organize and thoroughly plan my lesson to make sure my objective is clear so that my students will learn what needs to be learned. This will help me as a teacher to avoid an unsuccessful lesson because as my Uncle Jimmy always says, Fail to plan, plan to fail.