Running head: OBSERVATION #5 MATH 1

Observation #5 Math Lesson

Allison Gerlach

Raritan Valley Community College

Professor Kimberly Schirner

April 29, 2019

MATH LESSON 2

EDUC 230 Education Field Experience

I. Observation #4:
Teacher-taught math lesson

II. Grade Level and Subject Area:

Third Grade

III. Setting:
The Third-Grade classroom is located in the half circle building at the Willow School.
This building is where the Preschool to Fifth-Grade classrooms are as well as the
Library. There are seven students, ages 8-9 years old, with two girls and five boys in
this class. There is one teacher in this classroom where the children learn Math,
Writing, Reading, and Social Studies. Science is taught by a different teacher in a
different building as a special.

IV. Pre-Observation:
To facilitate an effective math lesson, it is important for a teacher to: “establish
mathematics goals to focus learning, implement tasks that promote reasoning and
problem solving, use and connect mathematical representations, facilitate meaningful
mathematical discourse, pose purposeful questions, build procedural fluency from
conceptual understanding, support productive struggle in learning mathematics, and elicit
and use evidence of student thinking” (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics,
2014). Without knowing what topic that the teacher will be teaching, I expect it will fall
into one of the four major categories of mathematics standards for third grade. Those
being: multiplication/ division, fractions, rectangular arrays/ area and the properties of
two-dimensional shapes (New Jersey Department of Education, 2016).

V. Data:
 Written on the board when the students come back from recess: “-Explore
Geoboards –Create shapes. Think about the number of sides and number of
angles”
 Start the lesson by reviewing measurements in general
 Explain what a geoboard is
 Hand out geoboards and rubber bands to each student
 They have 15 minutes to play with the geoboards
 Prompted to try using one rubber band
 Prompted to try and construct different shapes when they were struck creatively
 Look at the shape and see the number of sides and number of angles
 Introduce geography vocabulary right angles, perpendicular lines, line
segments, point
 “Lines go on forever, there can be points on the line”
 Perpendicular two lines cross exactly straight
 Parallel lines they go on forever and they do not intersect
 When two lines intersect they create angles
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 A rectangle how many sides, how many corners, how many angles
 Acute angle/ obtuse angles
 They are given a worksheet and they have to construct the shapes that are on the
sheet
 Teacher walks around and asks students the number of sides and the number of
angles they see in each shape to gauge their understanding on the lesson
 Students that have trouble answering the question are reminded of the definitions
of these terms
 They apply their knowledge of these terms to answer with the properties of each
shape that they construct
 When students were done with the shapes on the worksheet they were allowed to
construct whatever they wanted while they waited for their peers

VI. Analysis:
This lesson was very effective as an introductory lesson to geometry. One of the
main topics for third grade math is understanding how to categorize shapes based on
attributes that they have. In order to meet those standards, the students will need to
have a comprehensive foundation about what attributes a shape can have first. While
according to the NJSLS, they should have learned about angles and sides in second
grade, it was definitely necessary to have a review lesson about these important terms
because some students seemed to be learning this for the first time. By using this
lesson to bridge the review and introduction the teacher was very effective at
establishing a base of working knowledge in geometry for her students in this new
unit (New Jersey Department of Education, 2016).
In regard to teaching strategies, this lesson was again effective. When she clearly
printed the goals for the lesson on the board, she was giving the students a framework
for the lesson with clear learning objectives for them to guide their exploration. The
teacher provided the students with the appropriate academic language that they
needed to complete the lesson and she encouraged them to use the vocabulary in
discussion. By using this activity as a building block for the unit, she was making
sure that she was setting up a strong conceptual understanding for all her students. It
is not easy to accomplish this, especially in large classes, but by providing support to
the students that were struggling with the concepts, she assured that they all made
mathematical progress. Another extremely positive technique that was employed in
this lesson, was the use of time to explore with the geoboards. If she had not allowed
her students to first have fun with the geoboards, they would not have been able to
focus on the lesson. The exploration was productive and structured as she prompted
students to try and make certain shapes, try using only one rubber band and see what
happened etc. This method goes to show that this teacher knows the needs of her
students and meets them in a stimulating and academic way (National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics, 2014).

VII. Recommendations:
At the end of the lesson, the students were able to explore more with the
geoboards while they waited for their peers to finish the assigned constructions. This
lead to behavior problems because the students were not challenged anymore and
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their learning was no longer structured. To avoid this, the teacher could have
provided students that worked quickly with a challenge assignment. By giving them a
challenging geometry concept to work on, they would have previewed the lessons to
come in the unit. This technique would also provide students with “opportunities and
support to engage in productive struggle as they grapple with mathematical ideas and
relationships” (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2014).

VIII. Post Observation:

It would have been beneficial if I knew what topic the teacher was teaching
before I did my observation so that my pre-observation would have been stronger. If I
knew the specific content that she was targeting with her upcoming lesson, or if I had
a lesson plan prior, I would have had an opportunity to research that specific
standards and the research based around teaching that topic so my data collection
could also be stronger. It is important to be knowledgeable about all the learning
objectives for your students but some more specific data would have made my
observation even more effective.

IX. Citations:
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2014). Effective Mathematics Teaching

Practices.

New Jersey Department of Education. (2016). New Jersey Student Learning Standards for

Mathematics. Retrieved from

https://www.nj.gov/education/cccs/2016/math/standards.pdf