Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

Elementary Education Program

Pre-Observation Form

Directions: This form is to be completed prior to every lesson that will be observed by the mentor
teacher or university supervisor. It is to be submitted no later than 3 business days prior to the actual
observation along with your lesson plans.

Name: Tyra Kornegay Date:4/5/17

1. What is the topic of your lesson?

a. The topic of my lesson is making good economic choices in regards to
saving, spending, lending, and loaning money. This is a social studies
topic that is connected to the Common Core Standard 5.E.2.2 Evaluate
the cost and benefits of spending, borrowing and saving.

2. Why are you teaching this lesson? What is your rationale for teaching it?
a. I am teaching this lesson to teach students the important strategies of how
entrepreneurs handle and distribute money and show how the decisions
that were made affect their business. This will be done by reading to the
class the book One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Difference which
is based on the true story of how an African boy from Ghana helped his
village become prosperous by his egg business. Along with the book,
students will be making an artistic collage to demonstrate their knowledge
of the choices that the main character made in order for his business to
successful. This will allow students to be creative in showing their
learnings in an engaging way while also matching the style of illustrations
used within the books.

3. What is your Teaching Behavior Focus? Why did you choose this?
a. I chose the topic of Student engagement through discussion is fostered
because I wanted to really have the conversation about economics,
making good personal choices, as well as the retelling of events that
occurred in the book really be fostered between the students with me
acting as the facilitator.

4. Why did you design your instruction in this lesson the way that you did? Why did
you choose this way of teaching the lesson (e.g., Was the idea from a methods
course? From your mentor teacher? Another source?)
a. I designed my lesson this way because my cooperating ELA teacher
provided me the book as a resource to use for my lesson as well as for the
art based activity. I also designed my lesson this way because I really
wanted the students to show their learning through a creatively unique
way that they can be proud of and show ownership with their collage.
5. As you are thinking through this lesson, what do you believe will be the most
challenging part of this lesson for you when you teach it? Why?
a. The most challenging part of the lesson I believe will be having students
remember the different economic events that took place in the story to use
within their collage. This is due to the book providing a lot of examples.
Another challenging part of the lesson could be having the students
complete a finished product of their collage in the allotted time of my
lesson. This is due to the planned conversations between me and the
students as well as between the students.
6. How will you know if your learning outcomes for the students are met
successfully?
a. I will know the learning outcomes have been achieved once students have
created a successful and unique collage on making good personal
economic choices using terms that they already knew before the lesson
and learned during the lesson. Another way I will know that an outcome
has been successfully met is when students use the events and textual
evidence found within the story to base their pictures and ideas on while
creating their collage
7. How will your classroom management support the learning outcomes?
a. I will make sure that the classroom management skills I implement will
support the learning outcomes by monitoring student discussions as they
have think-pair-share conversations about topics within economics and,
specifically, entrepreneurship. I will also make sure to use a timer to help
me transition between the different activities in the lesson. Lastly, I will
walk around the students while they are working on their collages to make
sure they are clear on instructions and staying on task.
8. List 1-3 areas which you would like for your observer to pay particular attention.
Why do you want your observer to focus on these areas?
a. One area that I want my observers to pay particular attention on is the way
that I manage time in the implementation of student questioning and
activities during my lesson. This is because I find that I still need work on
scheduling an appropriate amount of time for the activities I planned so
that the students can do all of them. Another area that I would like the
observers to pay attention to is the way I engage students in deeper
thinking and questioning and provide opportunities to think-pair-share with
peers. This is because in my last lesson, I talked a lot to my students and
did not provide a lot of peer to peer questioning and sharing.
9. Is there anything else you would like your observer to know before the
observation?
a. I really look forward to having you observe my lesson and hearing the
feedback you have for me on how I can improve to being a more effective
teacher!