Jaynise Porter

Professor Cassidy Wertheimer

EDEL 433

May 6th, 2022

Shai Reshef, an educational entrepreneur once said: “when you educate one person you

can change a life, when you educate many you can change the world”. I have been wanting to

become a teacher since the age of six or seven. At that moment I knew it was my purpose to

make a difference in the lives of our children so that they could obtain the necessary skills to

thrive in the world. I can say today that I am on my way to serving what I feel is my purpose in

the world and making a difference in children's lives.

Through the knowledge obtained, experiences, and the times I have spent observing

classrooms I have come to learn that teaching is complex and challenging work. It is the goal of

the teacher to create an effective classroom environment which begins with getting to know

every one of your students and valuing the cultural identities within the classroom. Teachers

have to consider how they will run and manage their classrooms effectively. One of the strategies

identified as effective by my cooperating teacher is using Class Dojo. She shares that the

students value the points they receive on class dojo and don’t want them to be taken away.

Teachers must also design lessons implementing various teaching strategies that meet the needs

of the diverse selection of students in the class. This brings me to evaluations, with lessons a

teacher must also determine how they will measure or evaluate the students' learning. Will you

use informal or formal assessments? Will you use authentic assessments? Are you considering

the individual needs of the students? Although I have been on this journey to becoming a teacher
for three years now I am still learning and I know that being a teacher requires continuous

learning. Through experience, I will begin to know myself as a teacher and what I want to bring

to the students whom I have the opportunity to teach.

As I mentioned before, designing and implementing lessons can be challenging. During

this semester’s field hours I was able to design and present one of my first lesson plans to a class

of second-grade students. I can say that I developed an extreme amount of anxiety just knowing

the objectives of the project. I was able to work with Almira, my cooperating teacher and now a

person I consider to be a mentor. The focus of the lesson was to have students use place value to

mentally skip count. I did make changes to the lesson plan before I presented the lesson with my

goal of making it more engaging. In my personal opinion, my lesson was simple and

straightforward but there will always be room for improvement in the lesson plans. To decide

what changes need to be made it is necessary to be able to reflect. The book Success from the

Start states, “reflective teachers observe, analyze, and improve their practice to better facilitate

students’ development of mathematical ideas.

As I reflected, upon presenting the lesson the students were very excited that I was going

to teach them, or with this being the first time I definitely was going to try. I begin my lesson by

having the students skip count with the number chart in various ways. We begin by counting by

twos, fives, and then tens. During the warmup, everyone was engaged and participated except for

a few English language learners with low English proficiency levels. During the direct

instruction, students were asked to identify the missing numbers in a chart, and then after

completing the charts the students were asked to identify how they determined the missing

number. One of the missing numbers was 90. When I asked student G what was missing, and

how did he count to obtain the number he said he counted 89 and 90. I then asked students what
is another way we could have counted to 80 and student S said by tens. For this lesson, I used

scaffolding techniques as discussed this semester to help elicit the students' thinking and

introduced different techniques for solving problems. I worked on the guided practice together

with the students allowing them to come up and share their answers on the whiteboard which I

believe kept the student engaged in the lesson.

The lesson did not go as planned. Although I knew that the student came from diverse

backgrounds I thought I would be able to provide an opportunity for learning for everyone. For

the most part, the students did use strategies as planned. The students had previously been

working on place value and they were able to apply the understanding of place to identify the

patterns in a number sequence. The only difficulty that arose during the lesson was Maria, an

English language learner not being able to comprehend what was going on. From not being able

to comprehend the lesson instruction Maria became frustrated. I became completely lost, I didn’t

know how to alter or change the lesson at that moment to make it comprehensible for her. I wish

at that moment I could have implemented a strategy to make the lesson more comprehensible

whether it be having another student translate, or providing a small group instructional strategy

where she would receive some of the instruction in her native language while the other students

worked independently or partnered on practice problems. Another aspect of the lesson I would

change or differentiate would be the practice problems. I did notice that students were very quick

and responsive to the questions presented. One way I could differentiate this problem would be

to provide the students with random numbers to create their own number patterns.

From this lesson project and interview with my cooperating teacher and peers, I have

taken many things into account. Although I held my opinion in regards to my overall

presentation, my cooperating teacher thought I did very well to be presenting a lesson plan for
the first time. She thought that in the beginning, I was very nervous but as I continued I

developed the confidence needed to present the lesson. I know that I want to be the best teacher

possible, I want to be an effective teacher so as I have done with this lesson plan and my

experience this semester I will continue to reflect on my learning, lessons, and the experiences

to come. I will continue my journey to becoming an elementary teacher for second or third-

grade students. From the words of Almira, “ as a teacher, we will face many challenges and it

can become overwhelming but if I focus on the positive aspects I will overcome those

challenges.