Robert Stone
9/16/2014
The typical lesson I observe in my internship usually scored a 1 for every single category.
The reason for this is, I believe is because the class is an honors class and it’s a semester long.
So she tries to work through the material rather quickly so they can cover everything by the time
the semester is over. The pace also has to deal with her expectations of the students, which is
they are in an honor class so they should be able to learn these concepts quick and move right
along to the next.
For access to opportunities I would say this teacher gets a rating of 1. One example of
the reason she gets a 1 is because in her lesson on proving statements about segments and angles
students were often talking about things other than math among themselves. Students were
discussing things such as Snapchat and Twitter. So this showed me that these students were not
paying attention to the teacher and were well off task. Another reason she received a rating of 1
is because even though technically every student could participate, she seems to focus on
students who clearly look like they are struggling. This limits how much the students who do
understand what is going on from participating. These students that knew what they were doing,
but weren’t getting involved were also the same students who were often talking about things
other than what was being discussed in the class. The way the teacher communicated wasn’t at
or slightly above the students’ level, because the information she gave them was usually word for
word from the book. Even though the book was written for her grade level, the meanings should
be adjusted and explained somewhat differently depending on how the students in her class learn
it more easily.
For mathematical analysis I would again give this teacher a rating of 1. An example of
why she only received a rating of 1 is because the students were just receiving and reciting
routine procedures. The lessons were usually just lecture with occasional student question and
Robert Stone
9/16/2014
then they are assigned homework problems. The lesson on proving statements about segments
and angles is a lesson on proofs, which to me seems should be anything but routine. That being
said the students would just fill out a two column proof, where they more often than not would
use the same reasoning over and over for how they got the next step in the proof. Many of the
proofs only had 3 steps which were your given information, apply a theorem, and answer. There
were very little opportunities were theorems would overlap with each other when trying to prove
something. The students never really analyzed what was going on during the proofs; from the
lecture they just were memorizing what each theorem looked like visually in order to answer
their homework problems.
For the section on mathematical discourse and communication this class definitely
receives a rating of 1. As I said before the lessons are usually just a lecture with occasional
student questions then homework is assigned, which leaves little room for communication. The
most communication you see in the class room was students off topic discussing all sorts of
things other than math. The little communication about math was the teacher asking if they
understood the concept or not. If the students said yes she would move on and if the students
said no she would pretty much just read over the concept in just a little more detail and then
move on. When the class went over an example problem or two during the lecture on proofs,
because of being short on time the teacher just gave them the answer to each step rather quickly,
which gave very little time for students to do it themselves. After the lecture part of the class
was over, when students do have time to work on their homework, I saw some of the pairs
explaining concepts to each other. This would have been really awesome if it occurred during
the actual teaching of the content.
Robert Stone
9/16/2014
Even though the teacher did receive a rating of 1 across all of the categories for this
honors geometry class, she does seem to be on the higher rating side in her algebra1 classes. I
don’t get to observe her algebra 1 classes regularly, which is unfortunate. I can’t tell if this
difference in teaching styles is based on the difficulty requirements of the class, or for a higher
passion for one subject over the other. This teacher could use some improving on in all of the
categories for her honor geometry class. In the end I would say that the lesson wasn’t very good
at all based on the scale, but it did cover material in a timely manner.