Non Literacy Blog, Math Lesson

Last week my cohort partner and I taught a math lesson each to our 3rd grade Dyad class. The topic was Geometry. Yvonne went first on Monday. Her lesson was about the Line of Symmetry and Congruent Shapes. My lesson was on Tuesday and followed up with Diagonals and the shapes that Diagonals create. The lesson did not go well.

To begin with, on Monday, Yvonne had to spend more time on the introductory section -what should have been review - than she thought. She, therefore, was not able to get through all of her lesson. However, the students did seem to understand the concept of line of symmetry and congruency. On Tuesday, my lesson, which was right out of the textbook, began with labeling shapes and line segments. Then I was supposed to discuss the shapes that the diagonal created; i.e. a diagonal through a square is a line of symmetry and forms two identical triangles. The diagonal through a rectangle, however, is not a line of symmetry even though it forms two congruent triangles. As I was getting to this discussion, the teacher told me to send the kids to their desks to start on the worksheet; I was running out of time. Needless-to-say, the kids didn't understand the worksheet.

Just before the students' lunchtime, the teacher told me to go over the worksheet with them. I started to draw the shapes on the whiteboard in order to visually show them the outcome of the diagonals but the teacher told me there was not enough time, instead just talk about it. It was very frustrating for me.

I realized that I would never have taught this lesson this way. For her lesson Yvonne had brought large construction paper shapes, that she used to show how the line of symmetry is created. She and I discussed how each student should have their own in order to manipulate the shapes and to see for themselves. (The math curriculum had provided a sheet of shapes for each student to cut out and use. These were not effective as they were too tiny and, in some cases, not accurately cut out.) Furthermore, I would have broken the lesson up in to mini-lessons. Of course, I also realize that this comes from the hindsight - the experience of experiencing -the lesson as it went the first time.

For her part the teacher rearranged her lesson plans. She had brought in a math video that covered geometry. The kids watched it during their lunchtime. Furthermore, instead of doing cursive writing in the afternoon, we worked on the math homework sheet together. And, for Yvonne and me, she pulled up the GLE's from OSPI to show us that what we covered in those two days is really just introductory. The students are not expected to know this information until 5th grade. I had not forever ruined their math career by this one bad lesson.