Karina Gasca

EDUC 450
MTV Instructional Presentation and Reflection
Self-reflection:
Reflecting on how my lesson went, I can see where I can improve it. I think the activity I
created to go along with it had a good amount of participation from everyone in the class. My
whole lesson would not have gone well if my classmates did not participate, so I am very happy
that everyone participated. In addition to plenty of participation, I feel that allowing everyone to
participate helped the strategy be seen in action in a way that could be beneficial to our future
classes and lessons.
Changes I would make to it if I were to teach it again would be to explain more about
what to do after they fill out the think-puzzle-explore rubric. I found that I did not really wrap up
what they did and I jumped straight into explaining what the strategy was and how it has value in
lesson plans. After having them do the explore part, I would have liked to explain what the rest
of a lesson using this strategy would look like. Since the strategy I presented is more inquiry and
research-based, I had difficulty considering how to incorporate it into a math class.
Now that I have seen several other presentations from classmates and how they
incorporated their content areas into their strategies, I think that I could possibly use
think-puzzle-explore in math during a unit on geometry or another topic where I could ask them
to think about how certain topics in math are connected. An example would be asking them how
to prove Pythagorean’s theorem using a square or triangles. This would hopefully provoke their
curiosity and encourage them to want to find out on their how we can do that or how we can
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prove the quadratic formula using the standard form of a𝑥 +bx+c. To assess their learning, I
would want to see their progress from exploring their puzzles. Since they will most likely have
access to the internet or a textbook, I hope they will try to figure out how to find the information
they are searching for. Throughout the unit, I can recall back to this activity and follow up with
their thinking and see if any new puzzles have formed and how we might explore them. This
strategy mainly highlights that learning is an ongoing process, so it would not be unusual for
more puzzles to form. It would make me very happy to explore this with them.
Other Strategies:
Chalk-Talk: One of the other strategies I can see myself using in my content area is chalk-talk.
I was inspired by how the lesson was presented, and I can see the benefit of it being entirely
student-led. The teacher provides guiding topics and questions and allows the students to write
about what they know about their given topics. Then a new group of students can make
connections or ask questions to deepen their understanding or address misconceptions about the
different topics. I can see this being used in the math content area by having different stations of
concepts such as whole numbers, fractions, decimals, proportions, etc. and students will write all
they know about these topics. Then they will switch stations and make any connections they
have related to the previous station they were just at. By the end of the activity, we can discuss
what we noticed as a class and display their findings so they can relate to it when they feel they
want to be reminded of the connections.
 Karina Gasca
EDUC 450
Connect-extend-challenge: At first glance, this strategy seems like it would not work in a
content area such as math. However, when thinking about the purpose of this strategy being to
help students process information and fasten ideas together, I see potential in it. One idea that
came to mind was having the students work on an activity either individually or in groups;
individually will make sure students do their own work but may produce less dialogue, and then
once they have had enough time to work on it we come together as a class. Having the students
share their work for the activity will allow them to make connections to their classmate's answers
and whether they used the same method or even got the same answer. I really like this strategy's
extension and challenge portion because it allows the students to expand their thinking about
how they approached the problems and why they may have done something differently. This
may have to be stretched over several days since it will allow the students enough time to work
on it.
MicroLab Protocol: This strategy was very interesting to me since it allowed every person to
discuss their opinions for an equal amount of time. There is also an allotted time where no one
responds to their opinions, and instead, they have to sit with their thoughts and opinions of what
the previous person had said. This can be useful in a math class by giving every student the
chance to speak without being interrupted, and I as the teacher can assess where there is still
confusion in a method of solving certain problems. This will allow the less outspoken students
the opportunity to speak without having the other students make remarks immediately on
whether they agree or disagree. It can be done in a large-scale fashion using the whole class or
smaller groups. I feel like as whole class activity; this would produce better results. The activity
that pairs with this can be lengthy or a quick review before moving on to the next topic or as a
way to prepare them before an upcoming exam. As a teacher, I can gather information on
everyone’s understanding of these topics and make necessary adjustments.