It has been way too long since I last planned a formal lesson, however my Assessment Project has got me back into the classroom, and thus planning lessons. The fun part is that I am trying to integrate the assessment and differentiation practices that I am learning with the teachers in our school. Here is my basic plan for tomorrow. I will let you know how it goes, and would love input with insights in the following areas:
- Is there evidence of authentic “assessment for learning?”
- Are the questioning techniques uses safe and do they maximize student think time? (Are all students preparing to answer each question?)
- Are there any other strategies (Cooperative Learning, Concept Attainment or other) that may have been useful / may be useful next time?
**You must know this before reading the lesson**
- There are three students who are currently being pulled out of the class to receive intensive resource support with basic Math skills. As the support is available right now, we decided that it is best for them to receive the help and miss part of the fractions unit. The resource teacher will cover an adapted version of this content.
- There are four students who are working on an independent Wiki project about our fractions unit (I am sure I will blog about it soon). They are in the class but are using laptops.
- This is the second lesson on adding fractions with like denominators. The core teacher taught the first lesson and I am teaching the second “going deeper lesson”. While I teach this lesson the core teacher will pull out 4-5 student who she believes will struggle with the next concept (subtracting fractions with like denominators) and will pre-teach this concept. The following day she will teach this concept to the whole group.
- Therefore I am teaching about 16 average students in this class.
(These are my rough notes, not really a classic lesson format, just ideas of what I will be doing during the lesson)
Objective:
My objective is to have the students connect with the previous lesson and then extend their thinking by figuring out how to explain why we add the numerators when adding fractions and don’t add the denominators. By developing this level of understanding and the ability to explain it, they will be more likely to understand that they need to find like denominators before adding / subtracting fractions with different denominators.
Intro:
I will start by explaining to the students why I am teaching today as I have not taught them before. I will probably allow them to come up with one question about me as a teacher per pair and ask it, just to let them know a little about me as a teacher.
Learning Intentions:
“At the end of this lesson, you are going to put your books away and answer this question, on this piece of paper: “Please explain why you add the numerators when adding fractions and don’t add the denominators?”
Link to previous lesson:
“In your partners decide who is the numerator and who is the denominator”
“I am going to give you 30 seconds to discuss what your teacher taught you last class with a partner. Then I will randomly pick a few people to give me an answer.”
Get answers. Asking for the “numerator from this group to answer” and the “denominator from that group”
Instruction
“Ok, here are three questions to do with your partner, answer them, and come up with an explanation for me as to why I chose these questions, in this order, when most pairs are done, I will choose one numerator and one denominator to answer each question and then one of each to explain why you think I asked the questions in this order.”
(questions on overhead) 2/8 + 3/8; 3/4 + 1/4; and 5/16 + 15/16
Choose students to answer questions.
More Instruction / Cooperative Learning:
“Numerators choose your favourite consonant, write it down, Denominators choose your favourite vowel, and write it after the consonant, Numerators choose another consonant, write it down, denominators choose another vowel, write it down. This is your team name…write it on the top of both of your pages” (Example. “HIRA”, “NOHA”, “JARY” etc)
When I say go I want everyone to take 2 full minutes to try to write out the answer to your end of class quiz on this piece of paper. No talking, laughing, no smiling, no breathing…ok, fine, breathing is allowed – but that’s it!”
“Start”…”What are you doing, I didn’t say go”…”Go”
After 2 minutes…”Ok, now denominators you have 30 seconds to explain your answer to the numerators…numerators you must listen, no talking at all” 30 seconds pass “numerators you now have 30 seconds to talk” 30 seconds pass
Discuss your ideas with your partner and make any changes you would like to your answer.
Ok, everyone put your sheet on this table.
Anonymous Peer Assessment
I hand the sheets out at random…”Take 2 minutes with your partner and grade the two papers you have with a 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 based on these criteria”
0 – No response (blank)
1 – Attempt, but lacks understanding of concepts (adding fractions)
2 – Understands adding fractions but poor reasoning
3 – Clear reasoning, sensible and straightforward
4 – Clear, concise, easy to follow, well explained
Hand them in, and I call out team names to get them back. Give each pair a minute to look them over…ask students to put everything away, give out quiz.
Assessment
Collect “quiz” before end of block.