Name Jaimee Arnold
Date of Observation January 25, 2017
Placement RCHS- Barry West (Honors Algebra I)
In each box, reflect on the questions provided and provide detailed responses.
Planning and Preparation
Did you design instruction that supports the
students varying intellectual, social, emotional, and
physical needs? How did you differentiate?
It is an honors class so, in general, they are higher
level students and seem to understand what is being
taught. There are a few students that still struggle
and for those students I give a little more one-on-
one help while walking around the class as they do
their assigned work. When students are having
trouble understanding a concept to give them an
example that they can relate to in order to make the
idea make more sense to them.
Did you lesson and activities full address/support
the learning objective?
The standard met was Summarize, represent, and
interpret data on two categorical and quantitative
variables. The objective for the day was to
organize and interpret data using a box-and-
whisker plot. I feel like the lesson met the objective
well because it covered how to create and interpret
a plot and met the Algebra I standard.
Classroom Environment
Were student actively engaged and motivated?
What indicated engagement or lack thereof?
The students seem to be actively engaged during
instruction. The majority of them would call out an
answer when I asked a question openly and when I
specifically call on someone for input they
participated. When I got to the part where the
groups came up to the board to share their answers
I lost the ones that were still sitting. They didnt
have a specific task while waiting to go over the
answers so they would start to talk. I didnt mind a
little bit of talking while waiting for the groups to
finish writing but a couple of times they got too
loud and distracted.
Identify areas of strength and weakness in regard to
classroom management.
Strength: I walk around during anytime they are
doing individual work. So that keeps them on task
because they dont know when Im going to come
to their table and see where they are in their work. I
also learned how well standing near a group of
students makes them get quiet really fast. So not
only has that worked well for me but also its a
little bit entertaining.
Weakness: Im a soft spoken person. So getting
their attention or getting them on task when it gets
too loud or a little too crazy as a whole can be
difficult. Also knowing that they arent actually my
students makes it a little hard for me to take action.
Knowing that Im only the acting teacher makes
me feel like I dont have the authority to have
complete control.
Instructional Strategies
What strategies did you use to promote higher
ordered thinking?
For the lesson you saw there were two main goals
for the day, to create and interpret box-and-whisker
plots. The creating part was just finding data, but
the interpretation part is what was used to
encourage higher thinking skills. Asking questions
to make the students think was how that was done.
Once they made a plot they had to tell me what the
information they just found meant. There were also
real world problems there they had to use the plots
to make decisions and they had to explain why they
made those decisions.
Did you incorporate a variety of teaching
strategies? Which ones and how?
The teaching strategies used include lecture,
cooperative learning, and critical thinking. The first
part of the class was used to lecture to the class and
give examples on the board to instruct them on how
to create and interpret plots. The desks are set up in
groups so that encourages the students to work
together to get their answers, but also they were
specifically given group work for that lesson. Then
critical thinking was used when they were
questioned about why they chose their answer and
why it was the best one.
Reflection
What aspects of your lesson would you keep you
the same? Why?
I would keep the instruction time at the beginning
of class because I think in mathematics if a student
hasnt already been exposed to a concept they need
to see and do some examples in order to get them
started, unless they are just super intrinsically
motivated and love math. Which I dont think is
super common among 9th graders. I dont think
thats true for all topics but for most. I also would
keep the group work that I assigned. Since its an
honors class they are pretty well behave and
question each other when they come up with
different answers.
What aspects of your lesson would you change?
Why?
Something that I would probably do a little
different would be how the groups came up and
shared their answers on the board. I think I would
still let the come share because throughout the day
they seemed excited about writing on the board but
find a better way to keep the rest of the class
engaged as well. I would also go back through and
think about how to be more concise with what I am
trying to say. By not being well verse in explaining
algebra, because I havent taken it since high
school, I have to work on being more fluent with
what Im saying. Then of course my ongoing
problem with being soft spoken is something that
needs to change.