IX.

SELF-EVALUATION

The day that I taught this lesson was a day where I learned how to be very flexible in the classroom. On
this day I had planned with my cooperating teacher this lesson and we were set to have me teach in the
afternoon right after lunch. My cooperating teacher was also getting her second dose of the COVID
vaccine today at lunch, so the day was a little but hectic from the start. My Cooperating teacher ending
up having to leave during lunch due to a reaction and the schedule of the day was dramatically flipped.
My class was combined with another teacher’s class and I would have to change the time of my lesson
to the end of the day right before specials. The students were surprisingly behaved due to the abrupt
change in schedule but when it came time for me to teach my lesson the students were mentally done
for the day. I was able to get through the start of my lesson but when it was time for the students to
work on the worksheet assigned for the lesson, they did not want to do anything with it. They were
more worried about making it to gym on time than completing their work. I also was not able to use the
smart board to display the base-10 blocks for the students because my cooperating teacher had taken
her laptop home with her. Instead I drew the models on the white bored so that the students could have
a visual for what they were working on.

Due to the circumstances and the attention span of my students there are a few things that I would have
done differently. Instead of asking a lot of questions during the lesson I would ask a few just to see if
they understand the concept of the Base-10 blocks. Once I know that the students have an
understanding of the lesson, I would then incorporate the work page into the lesson. Instead of asking
my own questions and having them answer verbally, I would ask the questions that the worksheet and
have the students solve the answers for the page during the lesson instead of waiting till the end of the
lesson to ask them more questions. I would do this because I feel it would keep the students engaged
and they will not be burned out with more questions. I had also noticed that the students were able to
answer the questions just fine when we did not have the work page out but when it came time to work
on the work page it was as if the students knew absolutely nothing. This is another reason why I would
actively engage the students with the questions from the work page because then it would help them
make a better connection to my words and the words that they would see on the page.

I was also really surprised at how well the students had handled the manipulatives. Each student was
given their own set of base-10 blocks in a bowl. I told the students not to touch the blocks until it was
time to use them to answer questions and every student listened to the directions. I feel overall the
lesson went okay but I feel that if the day had run normal, they lesson would have moved a lot smoother
than it did on this day. The abrupt change in events allowed me to see what it was like to quickly adapt
and that not every day of teaching will go exactly as it is planned to.