Chris Dorff

Educ 232
Hodgkinson
April 1, 2014

Analysis of Planning and Teaching

As I am pursuing a masters degree in both math and special education, I elected to
teach a lesson in a class that would give me experience in both. The class I had the
opportunity to teach is called Developmental Algebra. It is a high school class offered at
Valley (West Des Moines) for students that have fallen behind in making progress toward
state math standards. The students are sophomores, juniors, and seniors, with many of
them taking the class for a second time. The math in this class is typically what is learned in
6
th
and 7
th
grade in the state of Iowa. Many of the participants are ESL students and/or
students that come from a low socio-economic status. There are also a high percentage of
students with behavioral problems. All of these factors need to be considered when
planning lessons for these students.

Lesson Planning

The lesson I taught the students was graphing parabolas. This is far more advanced
than anything these students had learned previously. The teacher had been informed that
these students will need to know this in the future in order to graduate from Valley. Thus,
he decided to start incorporating it into his lessons. The students have been working on
this for 1 week, though it seemed as if they had never seen the material before. The math
teacher, Mr. Cooley, told me to make the lesson as simple as possible. He also told me that
he has had the most success with these students when he demonstrates the problems on
the board and then gives them a worksheet for them to complete in class. None of them
complete homework and anything that is not direct instruction, is too complex for them to
focus on the lesson. For the lesson, I demonstrated very basic polynomial functions on the
board and had the students participate in going through all of the steps with me. I then had
them complete a worksheet that I created for them. The worksheet was designed to walk
them through each step without my assistance. However, the students we allowed to ask
for teacher assistance throughout the period as needed. The worksheet can be seen at
the bottom of this reflection. All of the problems are considered simple polynomials. As
one can see by looking at the worksheet, many of the problems appear to be the same. This
was by design. I wanted the students to do each step individually and work their way up to
graphing the problem. Mr. Cooley and I agreed that this was the easiest way for the
students to understand these problems. At the end of the period, the students handed in
the work they had completed and I checked it for accuracy before they left for the day.

Lesson Reception

While working through the problems on the board, some of the students
participated well when asked what questions. I did not have any problems with classroom
management while I was at the board or while students were working on the worksheet. I
felt I did a good job of speaking clearly and showing my control of the classroom. Mr.
Cooley said that if I can handle these students, I can handle any students. He also said that
the lesson went as well as I could have hoped for and I should not be discouraged by the
low scores on the worksheets. Lastly, he said I did a great job of presenting the lesson in the
simplest way possible.
However, despite working on the same material for the previous week, many of the
students looked as though they had never seen what I was going over before. This became
very apparent when I reviewed the worksheets and saw many of them did not understand
the lesson at all. Many of the students guessed on the problems when they didnt know the
answer. They did not ask one of the four adults in the room to help them despite being
encouraged to do so. The one thing Mr. Cooley told me I needed to change was the use of
mathematical terminology when teaching such low level students. When I started
demonstrating problems on the board, I used terms such as midpoint and average to
describe how to solve a problem. Mr. Cooley quickly told me that the students would have
no idea what the meanings of those words were even if they had heard them over and over
again. I felt I had trouble keeping the students on task but was later informed they actually
were very on task as compared to usual. I would also change how the worksheet was set
up. Currently, it has students do the first step for all of the problems, then the next step for
all of the problems, and so on. I would change it so students do all of the steps for one
problem before moving on to another.

Student Engagement

While I demonstrated lessons on the board, all students appeared to be engaged in
the lesson. I was able to get participation from almost everybody and very few side
conversations occurred. I believe this had a lot to do with talking confidently and with a
loud voice, moving around the room as I presented, and asking specific students to answer
questions. I encouraged participation when students felt they had the answer. It also
helped that I had three other adults in the room to help with classroom management. While
presenting the lesson I reflected on what methods have worked for me to engage students
in the past when I have been presenting a lesson while substitute teaching. It would seem
that having confidence in your self goes a long way in preventing classroom management
issues and keeping students focused on a lesson. While working on the worksheet, it was
more difficult to keep students engaged in the material as they were not forced to listen to
anybody speak. Most of these students do not care appear to care about their grades and
thus do not have motivation to work on any problems. Mr. Cooley also informed me that
they do not appear to care when presented with a very real world application of
mathematical information, such as how to save money. He also said that almost all of these
students need a one-on-one aid if they are to be engaged all of the time. I realized while
teaching this lesson, to engage students with such low motivation when they are given time
to work independently, a single teacher needs to move from student to student, essentially
making themselves into multiple teachers at one time.

Professional Goals

There are obviously many things that I can work on as a beginning teacher.
However, the main thing I would like to work on, as pertaining to these students, is student
engagement and motivation. As previously stated, the students in this class do not seem to
care about academic work at all. This is amazing to me because Mr. Cooley is an
outstanding teacher. It would be nice to get to know these students as individuals and see
why they are in this class and how I can help them want to learn. I believe it would be
immensely helpful for these students to see how the information they are learning is
beneficial to them right now as well as in the future. This is something I would like to
implement and perfect with my future classes.














Algebra 2 Name___________________
Period_____
# 1-3 Determine if the graph of the equation opens up or down, and if it is solid or dotted.
1.

2.

3.

# 4-7 Factor the following polynomials
4.

5.

6.

7.

# 8-11 Find the vertex of the following polynomials
8.

9.

10.

11.

#12- 15 Graph the following polynomials
12.

13.

14.

15.

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