Michael Martinez

11/18/14
EDUC 693
Third Teaching Reflection
Today I taught Mr. Stevens first period Business Economics class. The lesson I taught
today was about Monetary and Fiscal policy. My goal was to teach students how to determine
which policies were monetary and which were fiscal. Andy helped me find resources to use
when creating my lesson plan. This lesson went much better than my previous lesson. We
actually met beforehand to discuss how I would present the lesson and that really helped. I was
much better prepared and creating my own PowerPoint was very beneficial.
First period is composed of juniors and seniors. They are always good for me and I cant
explain how much that helps. I started the class by giving about a thirty minute lecture. I
included some visuals in the presentation to help those learners who are more visually
stimulated. Students took notes. After the lecture, we had a brain break. Students sat at their
tables and were given a number. The number they were given represented the group they
would be in for the activity.
We started the activity after the brain break. In the activity there were ten stations and
nine groups. Its a class of almost thirty students. Outside of class, I created ten posters with
quotes on them. Each quote was from a business publication or government press release and
represented either a monetary or fiscal policy. For the activity, students (in their small groups)
had to go to each station and on a sticky note write whether the quote was talking about
monetary policy or fiscal policy. Then they had to identify in one to two sentences why they
thought they were correct. Students were given five minutes per station, but after the chatter
started to become evident I asked them if five minutes was too long. They were honest and said
yes, so we reduced the time per station to three minutes.
The students did a great job of staying focused during the activity. I think getting up and
moving around got them more engaged. After all groups had gone through all stations,
everyone returned to their seats and we had a discussion. I collected all the posters and we
looked at each quote and the responses of the students. If there was confusion or a quote that
caused debate, we discussed it further. At the end of class, students completed a think-pairshare activity. They were asked to think about what they learned from the lesson and activity.
They were then asked to share that info with the person sitting next to them. We then had a

few students share their thoughts with the class. As a final assessment for the day, I asked
students to write down one thing they learned during class that they didnt already know and
to explain how they will remember it. They turned in what they wrote down as class ended.
I can honestly say I felt good about todays lesson. The students were engaged and
extremely supportive. I felt more confident than any other teaching and it was all because of
the amount of preparation that took place. I have quite a bit of information I can use to assess
student understanding. I have the sticky notes and their closing reflections to look at. I felt like
a real teacher today and it was a great feeling. I cant wait to teach my next lesson.