Emily Wilson EDU 497 Fall 2012 Reflective Essay on 3.

.6 Lesson Plan Reflective Essay The piece of work I chose to represent as my Best Piece of Academic Work is one of the lesson plans I created and implemented for an Algebra I class at Hellgate High School during my EDU 395 Field Experience. Prior to co-teaching and writing this lesson plan I had worked only with students in grades Kindergarten through Fifth. This lesson provided me with my first experience working closely with high school aged students, and also allowed me to teach a higher level of mathematical content. This lesson was on section 3.6 of the students Algebra I textbook. Section 3.6 is titled Solve Proportions Using Cross Products and focuses on just that, solving proportions using cross products. The previous five sections of Chapter 3 focus on solving other linear equations, and section 3.5 introduces solving proportions. My co-teacher and I built off of these previous lessons to create a two day plan in which students became quite comfortable using cross products. I feel that this is my best piece of academic work because it reflects the work I have put into learning to become an effective teacher. In this lesson I utilized many techniques learned in previous courses. I was very conscientious of my time management, behavior management, board work, appearance, and effectiveness of my lesson. I was able to build my lesson in such a way that students had a balanced amount of practice with both computational and story problems. By the end of this lesson most students were using cross products as their primary technique for solving proportions, students also understood why the cross product works. I used the technology of the InterWrite board to supplement my lesson, and created two documents which were used on the InterWrite board for each day of my lesson. These documents follow the problems outlined in my lesson plan. They are organized, concise, and clear. I also used individual whiteboards to engage the students in solving specific problems. The whiteboards were a better tool that I had predicted. My co-teacher and I were able to clearly see which students understood the concept and which didnt. The students enjoyed working with the whiteboards and were actively participating when solving for these problems. If I were to teach this lesson again I would try to achieve more student involvement throughout the lecture by calling on specific students and encouraging them to ask questions. Working on the InterWrite board was a great experience and I would most definitely utilize this, or a similar, technology again in this lesson. To improve upon the use of the InterWrite board I would improve my board work so that my handwriting was clearer and I would take advantage of other colors available to me on the board.