Desert Trail Elementary School is located in the Gadsden Independent School District at 310 E. Lisa Drive, Chaparral, New Mexico. The community of Chaparral is located ten miles to the north of El Paso, Texas, and twenty miles to the south of Las Cruces, New Mexico. The school has approximately 700 students in grades Pre-Kindergarten through six.
SUNRISE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (SE):
Sunrise Elementary School is located in the Gadsden Independent School District at 1000 County Line Drive, Chaparral, New Mexico. Sunrise Elementary is found in the eastern most portion of the district and serve both Dona Ana and Otero County students. Sunrise Elementary School provides students with a K-6 curriculum. Sunrise also provide Special Education services for Early Childhood. The school has approximately 30 classrooms and approximately 350 students.
· Rosalba Acosta: SE 6th Grade Bilingual (BT2) Mathematics Teacher
· Angelica Valencia: SE 6th Grade Monolingual Mathematics Teacher
Goals:In this lesson students explore the concept of the coordinate grid and are introduced to the idea of finding distances between points. Students find two types of distances: distance along grid lines (represented by driving distances along city streets) and straight-line distance (represented by flying distance).
Goals of the Lesson: 6th Grade students will be able define and identify the following terms:
a. Coordinate Grid
b. Y-axis
c. X-axis
d. Origin
e. Ordered pair
f. Coordinates
g. Point
h. Scale 6th grade students will be able to locate a coordinate on a coordinate grid and the distance between two given coordinate points. Rational:
The rational for this lesson was base on Blake Peterson’s recommendation for teachers who are not familiar with lesson study to refrain from creating a lesson and tasks from scratch. Upon much deliberation among the CMP lessons available, the study group agreed to use a lesson from “Looking for Pythagoras” found within the CMP 8th grade curriculum. This particular lesson addresses the NMSBA Mathematical Standards and Benchmarks for 6th grade mathematics and easily integrates into a 6th grade elementary classroom. The rational for this lesson also revolves around the importance of 6th grade students understanding the coordinate system and calculating the distances between two points on a coordinate grid. According to 2008 NMSBA data only 60% of 6th grade students within Gadsden Independent School District could not identify locations on a plane and describe spatial relationships using coordinate geometry. Student Tasks:
In this lesson, students will learn how to use a coordinate grid to locate points in a plane. Students will explore how to find distances between points and areas of figures on a coordinate grid. In the first lesson, the coordinate grid is in the form of a street map of a fictional city called Euclid. · Students learn about coordinate grids as they analyze a map in which streets are laid out on a grid. · Students make the connection between the coordinates of two points and the driving distance between them. · Students also explore finding the distance between two points on a grid without measuring.
Teachers Tasks: The elementary teachers within this lesson study hope to improve the mathematical discourse within their classroom. The elementary teachers in this lesson study hope to improve the mathematical discourse through revoicing, restating reasoning, allowing wait time for student thinking, and finding multiple strategies. The elementary teachers hope to gather a better understanding of this lesson through the following actions: · Understanding and solve the problem to recognize multiple solutions · Identify possible misconceptions and possible instructional missteps · Recognize different approaches and identify the important mathematics necessary for the lesson.
Recognize personal reactions to what a student may do.
2/1/10 Comments from Blake: I believe that the details of the lesson will come together more easily if you can provide a bit more detail in the stated goals. For example, what do students need to understand in order to "understand the coordinate system" or "Explore distances on a coordinate grid"? I would imagine that a key understanding of the "distances" goal could be the idea of adding and subtracting integers. The idea of absolute value is likely present even if it isn't stated explicitly to the students. An understanding of the Pythagorean Theorem and recognizing how to build triangles on the coordinate system might also be part of the "distances" goal. Since there is a lot that could be part of each of those goals, providing more detail will help clarify the scope and depth of what you hope to accomplish.
Reply DTE/SE: Dr. Blake you are correct in recognizing that this paticular lesson begins with the introduction of adding and subtracting integers. This paticular lesson is designed to work with 12-13 year old sixth graders. Currently they have limited experience in graphing and are barely building the understanding of how to create a coordinate system. We over looked this untill you pointed it out. We share our goals with our students at the beginning of the lesson and the broad goals we initially chosen would of probably gone over their head. Our goals are too broad and we can see that now. I suppose that by specifying our goals it prevents us from teaching too much or too little and it allows our students to know what is expected of them. Here is a revision of our goals with much more detail:
2/20/10 Comments by Blake about the Lesson
I have a couple of questions about the lesson. The answers to these questions could be in the lesson but I may have missed them.
1) The initial problem seems having the students look at a map of DC and asking them the questions about this map. Are these questions written in the book or will they be posed by the teacher?
2) After they have looked at the map of DC, they will be given a map of Euclid City. What big question(s) will they be asked to explore once they are given the map of Euclid?
3) In order to find the "helicopter distance," I assume that they will use the Pythagorean theorem. How much experience will the students have had with the Pythagorean theorem prior to this lesson and how significant of a role will the Pythagorean theorem play in the lesson compared to vertical and horizontal distance discussions.
Lesson Study Log:
1/15/10
Administrative and BLT Member planning for BLT responsibilities and requirements
Jaime Acosta-Administrators
1/20/10
BLT WIKI Setup
1/20/10
DTE-SE Lesson Study Group discussion on Blake Peterson Visit on Feb 26th, 2010
DTE & SE Lesson Plan Review: The mathematics of the lesson was reviewed and the goal of the lesson was discussed. The group discussed obsticles in the leson that could occur and reactions from the students. Group members agreed the text lesson was sufficient for the first practice leson because the group wanted a type of placebo for reference prior to change. Since administrators require fidelity to the curriculum the group felt it would be intersting to see "fidelity to the curriculum in action".
The group really enjoyed the lesson study experience and the oppurtunity to collaborate.
3/15/10
Spring Break
3/15/10 - 3/26/10
Due to planned vacations and professional devlopment teachers were unable to meet.
3/29/10
First Practice lesson by Rosie Acosta:
Lesson Plan Draft 2: Rosie Practice Lesson
external image msword.png
Lesson was recorded (45 minutes) and was supposed to be put on the Wiki space but space does not allow enough memory for download.
Group discussed importance of introduceing lesson vocabulary at the beginning of the lesson or providing a warm up activity at the beginning of the lesson. Rosie decided to identigy, define the vocabulary with her students prior to the lesson to establish understanding of terms to be used in the lesson. Rosie beleived her lesson launch faired well, she highlighted the students schema of coordinate graphing. She made real world connections regarding the use of coordinate graphing. Students had difficulty in determining the distance. After some probing questioning the student understood how to get the distance. The students used rudimentory skill of visually counting squares or piecing squares to determine the distance.
-Greater teacher understanding of background knowledge
-Less amount of time on vocabulary intruction
-Summarize lesson for student for student memory retention
Modification: Used an overhead for modeling, A labsheet of cm grid. Possibly front load questions.
3/29/10
State NMSBA Testing
3/29/10 - 4/16/10
Teachers were involved with state testing and were unable to meet.
4/6/10
Group meeting with teachers at DTE and SE regarding progress in offering suggestions or comments to edit lesson. Angelica has agreed to go forward with Practice lesson 2 and change the resources (overhead and transpancies) and new vocabulary approach (student directed using overhead). Lesson Plan is change to integrate instructional process.
Lesson Plan Draft 3- Angelica Practice Lesson: _
Comments from Susana:
Jaime is this your most recent lesson plan? No I have posted the one we edited after this one and I will post the one we're doing for the public lesson tomorrow. Do you have more concrete mathematical ideas that the teacher and the students will be doing at particular times? We can adjust the lesson to integrate a time frame. What I mean is more detail on the mathematical instructions and tasks. What are exactly the things that the teacher will be telling students to do? We can go more in detail than we have in our previous lesson plans. Yes, that isthe only way we can give you guys feedback. What you have now is too general and it does not tell us what you will be doing. i. e. which questions you will ask and how will you word them and why, What do you expect students to do if you ask them that way, etc. What do you guys anticipate students to spend the time discussing. The student disscussions have involved conversations about the components of a coordinate grid, the correct way of reading a coordinate grid (x,y), the quadrants, counting verticle and horizontal units.Yes, this is the type of anticipated studens' solutionsthat we had talked about What do you guys anticipate your students will have difficulty with? The difficulty we have found is their ability to read the x coordinate beforethe y coordinate. They have difficulty differentiateing between negative integers and positive integers.Yes, this are also anticipated students' solutions. So, what are the things, comments, suggestions you will give them when they get stucked there? how will you word them exactly? How will you address those issues? We plan on addressing this issue through providing a more concrete introducion prior to the lesson through a online video.Well perhaps it is too late now, but, you may think about how to address them when they appear instead of anticipating them so that they can learn better from them if they do make the mistake themselves. Do you anticipate that students will have different answers for a particular question? Yes, when we ask them to provide the distance between two coordinates that are neither verticle or horizontal, but diagnal. In the section of anticipated students responses there are no responses from students yet in this version. We had difficulty understanding the format of the lesson plan. We have since altered it in draft 4. What do you guys plan to do if most students get to the answers faster. We have additional questions that provide extension which leads to subtracting coordinates. Do you have other tasks planned? Yes, in our usuall process which we now recognize needs to be put in the final version lesson plan. We ask students to provide reflections within their math portfolios.Yes, please add all these things to your lesson plan so that we can have an idea of the `script' of the lesson when we read it before hand.
I will try to insert in your lesson plan more concrete comments tomorrow. I just wanted to make sure you guys haven't already done all of this that I am asking you. Please insert comments in draft 4 and I can integrate them into the final lesson. I need to get with my group on some of your suggestions to get their input. Also, Blake is not in this wiki. Wow! I did not know that, I thought it automatically updated the BLT Wiki. I will immediately update our BLT page.some comments Blake IS in this wiki. He already put some comments today (below) I was talking about your own wiki that you created for your own team. If you want him to give comments that you can use for before the day of the lesson, you may want to put your most recent version of your lesson in the other wiki. I am still updateing this page because I still have observational logs and pre-interviews to update. Susana
Angies Valancia Practice Lesson:
Angie provided her lesson infront of 20+ 6th grade students. Students are monolingual. Angie overall felt confident about her lesson. She felt her students mastered the goals of the lesson. However, she felt could of improved the lesson by using the overhead by displaying the Map of D.C. and also have students identify the landmark locations on the overhead. She would have liked her students to explain their reasoning and strategies for finding those locations. The group agreed with Angies changes and also offered a change to the lesson could inlude the use of cardinal points and correct terminology would of strengthened the students academic vocabulary. Angie Self Observation Log.docxRosie Observational Log on Angie.docxJaime Acosta Observational Log On Angelica.docx
Changes approved to lesson:
-A visual coordinate graph for students
-students modeling the location of points and locations on the coordinate gride
-More student discussion and explaination of strategies
-Use of cardinal points and terminology.
4/19/10
Review of Lesson Plan
Group members discussed going more indepth with the vocabulary. Possible suggestions are word boxes, word wall, portfolio, etc. Teachers discussed and agreed using the overhead and demonstrateing vocabuary on a grid and having students facilitate the interpretation of the vocabulary prior to the lesson. A cm transpancy will be added to the instruction for student to demonstrate their understanding of the grid.
Lesson Study Plan Draft 4: Francs Practice Lesson: 4/27/10
Review of Lesson Plann
Frances Arocha-Practice Lesson
Ms. Arocha expressed that she was not content with her lesson. She felt that the lesson was to large for one day and that the D.C. or vocabulary introduction had to begin the day before. The group agreed, however they liked the use of an anchor chart for students, that the launchwas done on the carpet as a class,and that the display of the D.C. map on the overhead helped the students in their understaning.
Angie Observational Log on Arocha.docxRosie Observational Log on Arocha.docxJaime Acosta Observation Log on Arocha.docx5/4/2010 - Comments from Blake I apologize that I haven't commented sooner but I hadn't spotted the updates before now. I looked at the most recent lesson plan and here a few thoughts.
1. I was not completely clear how the lesson would transition from the discussion about Washington DC to the discussion about the City of Euclid. What big ideas do the students need to get from the DC discussion that will contribute the the Euclid discussion? I read one note that indicated that you might do the DC lesson and the Euclid lesson on two different days. That seems reasonable but the question that I just posed still exists: What big ideas do the students need to take from the DC lesson to the Euclid lesson?
2. I saw some anticipated student thinking for the DC portion of the lesson but I didn't see any for the Euclid lesson. Maybe I missed them. In any case they are very important. What kind of thinking do you believe the students will use to solve the questions about the city of Euclid? What are the common correct strategies and what are the common errors?
3. In the conclusion/discussion of the lesson, do you plan on using the student thinking to bring out the ideas that you have identified? You have some good questions in the "summing up" part of the lesson but will this just be a teacher led discussion? It seems as though you have set things up to where you could ask students to share their methods to respond to the "summing up" questions. Before the lesson, you should try to list the anticipated student thinking and once you have done this, you can think about the sequence in which you would like to have that thinking shared in the discussion and the points you would like to emphasize in the discussion.
4. In summary, it seems as if you need to more clearly articulate how you will use student thinking in the class discussion so that the students can arrive at the main conclusions by learning from each other.
Blake & Susanna,
We have made changes to our lesson and hopefully addressed some of the suggestions you and Sussana offered. Yes, the summary is to bring out ideas and the thinking of the students, but thinking and ideas offered by the student is not limited to the summary. There are about three class discussions within the lesson to adress misconceptions and reinforce understanding. We have fixed the transition areas so that the lesson flows together and make sense. We have also removed some components due to much fluff and because the sequence changed when we listed the aticipated thinking.
Desert Trail Elementary School is located in the Gadsden Independent School District at 310 E. Lisa Drive, Chaparral, New Mexico. The community of Chaparral is located ten miles to the north of El Paso, Texas, and twenty miles to the south of Las Cruces, New Mexico. The school has approximately 700 students in grades Pre-Kindergarten through six.
SUNRISE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (SE):
Sunrise Elementary School is located in the Gadsden Independent School District at 1000 County Line Drive, Chaparral, New Mexico. Sunrise Elementary is found in the eastern most portion of the district and serve both Dona Ana and Otero County students. Sunrise Elementary School provides students with a K-6 curriculum. Sunrise also provide Special Education services for Early Childhood. The school has approximately 30 classrooms and approximately 350 students.
BLT Lesson Study Representative:
Jaime C. Acosta:
Lesson Study Members:
· Frances Arocha: DTE 6th Grade Monolingual Mathematics Teacher
· Marcia “Penny” Sanchez: DTE 6th Grade Monolingual Mathematics Teacher
· Rosalba Acosta: SE 6th Grade Bilingual (BT2) Mathematics Teacher
· Angelica Valencia: SE 6th Grade Monolingual Mathematics Teacher
Goals: In this lesson students explore the concept of the coordinate grid and are introduced to the idea of finding distances between points. Students find two types of distances: distance along grid lines (represented by driving distances along city streets) and straight-line distance (represented by flying distance).
Goals of the Lesson:
6th Grade students will be able define and identify the following terms:
a. Coordinate Grid
b. Y-axis
c. X-axis
d. Origin
e. Ordered pair
f. Coordinates
g. Point
h. Scale
6th grade students will be able to locate a coordinate on a coordinate grid and the distance between two given coordinate points.
Rational:
The rational for this lesson was base on Blake Peterson’s recommendation for teachers who are not familiar with lesson study to refrain from creating a lesson and tasks from scratch. Upon much deliberation among the CMP lessons available, the study group agreed to use a lesson from “Looking for Pythagoras” found within the CMP 8th grade curriculum. This particular lesson addresses the NMSBA Mathematical Standards and Benchmarks for 6th grade mathematics and easily integrates into a 6th grade elementary classroom.
The rational for this lesson also revolves around the importance of 6th grade students understanding the coordinate system and calculating the distances between two points on a coordinate grid. According to 2008 NMSBA data only 60% of 6th grade students within Gadsden Independent School District could not identify locations on a plane and describe spatial relationships using coordinate geometry.
Student Tasks:
In this lesson, students will learn how to use a coordinate grid to locate points in a plane. Students will explore how to find distances between points and areas of figures on a coordinate grid. In the first lesson, the coordinate grid is in the form of a street map of a fictional city called Euclid.
· Students learn about coordinate grids as they analyze a map in which streets are laid out on a grid.
· Students make the connection between the coordinates of two points and the driving distance between them.
· Students also explore finding the distance between two points on a grid without measuring.
Teachers Tasks:
The elementary teachers within this lesson study hope to improve the mathematical discourse within their classroom. The elementary teachers in this lesson study hope to improve the mathematical discourse through revoicing, restating reasoning, allowing wait time for student thinking, and finding multiple strategies. The elementary teachers hope to gather a better understanding of this lesson through the following actions:
· Understanding and solve the problem to recognize multiple solutions
· Identify possible misconceptions and possible instructional missteps
· Recognize different approaches and identify the important mathematics necessary for the lesson.
Comments from Blake regarding our Lesson Study:
2/1/10 Comments from Blake: I believe that the details of the lesson will come together more easily if you can provide a bit more detail in the stated goals. For example, what do students need to understand in order to "understand the coordinate system" or "Explore distances on a coordinate grid"? I would imagine that a key understanding of the "distances" goal could be the idea of adding and subtracting integers. The idea of absolute value is likely present even if it isn't stated explicitly to the students. An understanding of the Pythagorean Theorem and recognizing how to build triangles on the coordinate system might also be part of the "distances" goal. Since there is a lot that could be part of each of those goals, providing more detail will help clarify the scope and depth of what you hope to accomplish.
Reply DTE/SE: Dr. Blake you are correct in recognizing that this paticular lesson begins with the introduction of adding and subtracting integers. This paticular lesson is designed to work with 12-13 year old sixth graders. Currently they have limited experience in graphing and are barely building the understanding of how to create a coordinate system. We over looked this untill you pointed it out. We share our goals with our students at the beginning of the lesson and the broad goals we initially chosen would of probably gone over their head. Our goals are too broad and we can see that now. I suppose that by specifying our goals it prevents us from teaching too much or too little and it allows our students to know what is expected of them. Here is a revision of our goals with much more detail:
2/20/10 Comments by Blake about the Lesson
I have a couple of questions about the lesson. The answers to these questions could be in the lesson but I may have missed them.
1) The initial problem seems having the students look at a map of DC and asking them the questions about this map. Are these questions written in the book or will they be posed by the teacher?
2) After they have looked at the map of DC, they will be given a map of Euclid City. What big question(s) will they be asked to explore once they are given the map of Euclid?
3) In order to find the "helicopter distance," I assume that they will use the Pythagorean theorem. How much experience will the students have had with the Pythagorean theorem prior to this lesson and how significant of a role will the Pythagorean theorem play in the lesson compared to vertical and horizontal distance discussions.
Lesson Study Log:
1/15/10
- Administrative and BLT Member planning for BLT responsibilities and requirements
- Jaime Acosta-Administrators
1/20/10- BLT WIKI Setup
1/20/101/21/10
- DTE-SE Lesson Study Group finalization of participating group members and lesson study responsibilities.
- Discussion of researching Blakes's suggestions.
- Jaime Acosta, Frances Arocha, Penny Sanchez, Rosalba Acosta, Angelica Valencia
1/22/10- WIKI Update
- Discussion on recent email requirements
- Discussion on what Lesson Study is
- Jaime Acosta, Frances Arocha, Penny Sanchez, Rosalba Acosta, Angelica Valencia
1/25/10- Review of Blakes suggestions
- Researching Blakes writings
- Administrative agreement from SE for teacher participation
- Jaime Acosta, Frances Arocha, Penny Sanchez, Rosalba Acosta, Angelica Valencia
1/29/10- Agreement on lesson and review of lesson
- Jaime Acosta, Frances Arocha, Penny Sanchez, Rosalba Acosta, Angelica Valencia
2/1/10- WIKI Update
- Lesson Study Review
- Discussion of Lesson
- Jaime Acosta, Frances Arocha, Penny Sanchez, Rosalba Acosta, Angelica Valencia
2/2/1- Discussion of preparing lesson prior to end of February
- Jaime Acosta, Fances Arocha, Penny Sanchez, Rosalba Acosta, Angelica Valencia
2/9/10- Discussion of lesson format changes.
- WIKI Discussion
- Review of Lesson and Mathematics of lesson
- Jaime Acosta, Frances Arocha, Penny Sanchez, Rosalba Acosta, Angelica Valencia
2/12/10- Disscussion over lesson materials and format
- Jaime Acosta, Frances Arocha, Penny Sanchez, Rosalba Acosta, Angelica Valencia
2/19/10- Discussion over Lesson Plan edits
- Discussion over Lesson Format
- Discussion over mathematics of lesson
- Jaime Acosta, Frances Arocha, Penny Sanchez, Rosalba Acosta, Angelica Valencia
2/22/10- Discusion over edits to lesson
- Scheduleing lesson observation
- Discussion of Blake Lesson Study Observation
- Format reviewed of GMS & CMS lesson Study.
2/25/103/15/10
- Spring Break
- 3/15/10 - 3/26/10
- Due to planned vacations and professional devlopment teachers were unable to meet.
3/29/10- First Practice lesson by Rosie Acosta:
Lesson Plan Draft 2: Rosie Practice LessonImprovements and changes to lesson:-
3/29/10
- State NMSBA Testing
- 3/29/10 - 4/16/10
- Teachers were involved with state testing and were unable to meet.
4/6/10- Group meeting with teachers at DTE and SE regarding progress in offering suggestions or comments to edit lesson. Angelica has agreed to go forward with Practice lesson 2 and change the resources (overhead and transpancies) and new vocabulary approach (student directed using overhead). Lesson Plan is change to integrate instructional process.
Lesson Plan Draft 3- Angelica Practice Lesson:_
Comments from Susana:
Jaime is this your most recent lesson plan? No I have posted the one we edited after this one and I will post the one we're doing for the public lesson tomorrow. Do you have more concrete mathematical ideas that the teacher and the students will be doing at particular times? We can adjust the lesson to integrate a time frame. What I mean is more detail on the mathematical instructions and tasks. What are exactly the things that the teacher will be telling students to do? We can go more in detail than we have in our previous lesson plans. Yes, that isthe only way we can give you guys feedback. What you have now is too general and it does not tell us what you will be doing. i. e. which questions you will ask and how will you word them and why, What do you expect students to do if you ask them that way, etc. What do you guys anticipate students to spend the time discussing. The student disscussions have involved conversations about the components of a coordinate grid, the correct way of reading a coordinate grid (x,y), the quadrants, counting verticle and horizontal units.Yes, this is the type of anticipated studens' solutionsthat we had talked about What do you guys anticipate your students will have difficulty with? The difficulty we have found is their ability to read the x coordinate beforethe y coordinate. They have difficulty differentiateing between negative integers and positive integers.Yes, this are also anticipated students' solutions. So, what are the things, comments, suggestions you will give them when they get stucked there? how will you word them exactly? How will you address those issues? We plan on addressing this issue through providing a more concrete introducion prior to the lesson through a online video.Well perhaps it is too late now, but, you may think about how to address them when they appear instead of anticipating them so that they can learn better from them if they do make the mistake themselves. Do you anticipate that students will have different answers for a particular question? Yes, when we ask them to provide the distance between two coordinates that are neither verticle or horizontal, but diagnal. In the section of anticipated students responses there are no responses from students yet in this version. We had difficulty understanding the format of the lesson plan. We have since altered it in draft 4. What do you guys plan to do if most students get to the answers faster. We have additional questions that provide extension which leads to subtracting coordinates. Do you have other tasks planned? Yes, in our usuall process which we now recognize needs to be put in the final version lesson plan. We ask students to provide reflections within their math portfolios.Yes, please add all these things to your lesson plan so that we can have an idea of the `script' of the lesson when we read it before hand.
I will try to insert in your lesson plan more concrete comments tomorrow. I just wanted to make sure you guys haven't already done all of this that I am asking you.
Please insert comments in draft 4 and I can integrate them into the final lesson. I need to get with my group on some of your suggestions to get their input.
Also, Blake is not in this wiki. Wow! I did not know that, I thought it automatically updated the BLT Wiki. I will immediately update our BLT page.some comments Blake IS in this wiki. He already put some comments today (below) I was talking about your own wiki that you created for your own team. If you want him to give comments that you can use for before the day of the lesson, you may want to put your most recent version of your lesson in the other wiki. I am still updateing this page because I still have observational logs and pre-interviews to update.
Susana
- Angies Valancia Practice Lesson:
Angie provided her lesson infront of 20+ 6th grade students. Students are monolingual. Angie overall felt confident about her lesson. She felt her students mastered the goals of the lesson. However, she felt could of improved the lesson by using the overhead by displaying the Map of D.C. and also have students identify the landmark locations on the overhead. She would have liked her students to explain their reasoning and strategies for finding those locations. The group agreed with Angies changes and also offered a change to the lesson could inlude the use of cardinal points and correct terminology would of strengthened the students academic vocabulary.Changes approved to lesson:
4/19/10
- Review of Lesson Plan
- Group members discussed going more indepth with the vocabulary. Possible suggestions are word boxes, word wall, portfolio, etc. Teachers discussed and agreed using the overhead and demonstrateing vocabuary on a grid and having students facilitate the interpretation of the vocabulary prior to the lesson. A cm transpancy will be added to the instruction for student to demonstrate their understanding of the grid.
Lesson Study Plan Draft 4: Francs Practice Lesson:4/27/10
I apologize that I haven't commented sooner but I hadn't spotted the updates before now. I looked at the most recent lesson plan and here a few thoughts.
1. I was not completely clear how the lesson would transition from the discussion about Washington DC to the discussion about the City of Euclid. What big ideas do the students need to get from the DC discussion that will contribute the the Euclid discussion? I read one note that indicated that you might do the DC lesson and the Euclid lesson on two different days. That seems reasonable but the question that I just posed still exists: What big ideas do the students need to take from the DC lesson to the Euclid lesson?
2. I saw some anticipated student thinking for the DC portion of the lesson but I didn't see any for the Euclid lesson. Maybe I missed them. In any case they are very important. What kind of thinking do you believe the students will use to solve the questions about the city of Euclid? What are the common correct strategies and what are the common errors?
3. In the conclusion/discussion of the lesson, do you plan on using the student thinking to bring out the ideas that you have identified? You have some good questions in the "summing up" part of the lesson but will this just be a teacher led discussion? It seems as though you have set things up to where you could ask students to share their methods to respond to the "summing up" questions. Before the lesson, you should try to list the anticipated student thinking and once you have done this, you can think about the sequence in which you would like to have that thinking shared in the discussion and the points you would like to emphasize in the discussion.
4. In summary, it seems as if you need to more clearly articulate how you will use student thinking in the class discussion so that the students can arrive at the main conclusions by learning from each other.
Blake & Susanna,
We have made changes to our lesson and hopefully addressed some of the suggestions you and Sussana offered. Yes, the summary is to bring out ideas and the thinking of the students, but thinking and ideas offered by the student is not limited to the summary. There are about three class discussions within the lesson to adress misconceptions and reinforce understanding. We have fixed the transition areas so that the lesson flows together and make sense. We have also removed some components due to much fluff and because the sequence changed when we listed the aticipated thinking.
Public Lesson Plan Draft
Public Lesson:
5/6/10: Public Lesson
- Desert Trail Elementary: 310 E. Lisa Drive, Chaparral, NM
12:30 – 12:40PM Room 414 Introductions/Sign in12:40 -2:10 PM DT/Sunrise ES Public Lesson
2:25 – 3:25 PM Room TBA DT/S Debrief
3:30 – 3:45 PM Survey and sign out
5/6/10-5/17/10 Lesson Development and Final Lessson Draft.
June 4th: Final Report Submittal
June 9-10: Public Power Point Presentation on Lesson Study and Findings. NMSU and MC2.
June 14: Desert Trail Elementary & Sunrise Elementary PCMI Collaborative Report
Resources:
Practice Lessons:
Rosie: Completed-Video Available
Angelica: Completed-Video Available
Francis: Completed-Video Available
Jaime: Public Lesson