Melani Spath

Post Lesson Reflection

1. The learning objectives for this lesson were to be able to explain what 0 does
to a number when it is an exponent and explain what effect a negative
number has when it is an exponent. The students were given a rather
challenging ticket out the door to end the class period. The first two questions
were on zero-exponents. Most students for both of these right a couple had
some predicted error, but for the most part students mastered the first
objective. The next two questions were about rearranging a problem to get all
positive exponents. The was a little past the scope of the objective but was
just to see if the students could expand on the information they were given to
solve these. About half of the class got one of these right there were only a
couple that got both right. This was expected since this lesson is going to be
expanded on in the next class. The students arent quite there yet with
objective two, but should be by the end of the next class.
2. For this lesson, I was asked to teach this off of the worksheets and PowerPoint
that my cooperating teacher normally uses. I was also asked to teach the
same way as my cooperating teacher. This includes a brief whiteboard warmup followed by going over the homework from the night before and then
getting into the lesson. If I would have been able to change anything about
this lesson, I would have given the students a shorter better created warmup. It took about 15 minutes to get through which in my opinion was a little
long. I think if I had set up the warm-up I would have put all 5 questions on
the same slide to speed it up a little bit. I also think I would have not gone
over the homework because the class I teach just copies the answers to get
credit for the assignment. Since this class is known to do that, I would have
just skipped this step and gone straight into the lesson to be able to have
more time for the actually objectives.
3. I imagine the next lesson will be teaching how to rearrange a problem in
order to get all of the exponents to be positive so that the students can
understand the 3rd and 4th question on the ticket out the door. Shirley
Martinson also said that she was fine if any day I just wanted to walk up to
the board and teach based on her pre-made PowerPoints and worksheets so
its possible my next lesson may be me spontaneously coming in the
classroom and just teaching.