For the unit that your Lesson Study lesson plan is situated in, what are your student outcomes (unit topic, understandings, knowledge, skills) and your end of unit assessment? How does your planned instruction & formative assessment for the lesson plan move your students toward that goal?
My video-tapped lesson occurs during our multiplication and division unit. The unit combines three of the major standards on multiplication and division, including Number Sense 3.1 and 3.2 which involve the use of repeated addition and subtraction, counting by multiples, and grouping to solve multiplication and division problems. The unit also covered standards that require students to know their 2, 5 and 10’s times tables.
The goal of the unit was not necessarily for students to have a firm memorization of multiplication and division facts (eg: 6 x 6 = 36), but for students to develop a deep understanding of the concepts of multiplication and division and to learn how to apply those understandings to real life situations and story problems. Ultimately students should be able to score a 90% or higher on the end of unit assessments, which test them not only only being able to solve problems like 6x6 but also on how to choose the correct operation in story problems and how to choose/implement the taught strategies to arrive at an answer.
The particular lesson which was video-tapped introduced students to a strategy for solving division problems, the strategy is known as repeated subtraction. This tied into the unit goals in two ways. First, it added to student’s previous knowledge of what division is. Students already understood that in division you start with how many in all then split them equally into smaller groups. This lesson expanded upon that knowledge and allowed them to view division through a different lens. In multiplication we use repeated addition because in most cases we are trying to find how many in all, consequently the number will increase. In division, we use repeated subtraction because we know how many in all and usually need to find a smaller number. The lesson also provided students with an additional skill. Previously students could only draw pictures to solve division problems, now they have another strategy at their disposal.
The instruct for this lesson was mostly direct, but portions asked students to put their head together to discuss what repeated addition is and why they think we use it for division. It attempted to help students construct knowledge which would in turn promote their deeper understanding of division. The formative assessment, which was a worksheet, was a sheet of story problems with the division problems listed. This assessment not only gave them a chance to practice the newly aquired skill but also gave them more real world context for when to use division.
The challenge activity for early finishers gave students math problems for which they were asked to write division problems. This activity was aimed at promoting critical thought amongst the students.
The differentiation in this lesson for the small (lower) group attempted to lay more scaffolding on how to set up repeated subtraction problems based on a certain division problem. It focused primarily on teaching students the skill so that the students would be able to solve division problems using the skill on their own.
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Jason, it sounds like this was a solid lesson. YOu have included the summative assessment which is the end of the unit assessment and the formative assessment which was the worksheet. Overall, how did the class do on that lesson? DId you take the worksheets and grade them or set up a rubric of some kind or did you just take a quick peek at them to get a general idea of how they did? Did you teach the same lesson the same way for each class, or do you like me find that with different classes you have to approach the lesson in different ways? I find that I teach the Spartans in a completely different way than I approach a lesson with say the Broncos. I was just wondering if you have experienced this with all four of your classes too.
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