Jenny Swanson

2/9/11

Psychology 205

Lesson Plan Analysis

For my analysis I decided to use a math lesson plan called Awareness of Pre-Algebra concepts. I felt like this essay was the best to use because it had a lot of good ideas which helped me associate the concepts we learned in class to the lesson plan. There are many concepts that relate to the lesson plan; the first concept is modeling. Modeling is used in many different ways. The first way is through teacher modeling; in the overview section of the lesson plan he talks about how most students are afraid of algebra because of their past experiences or what they heard of it. That is why it is important for him to model to the students that algebra could be a fun and exciting subject to learn. The ways he says he models this behavior is by doing problems on the board and playing games that relate to the subject that they are doing. It would also be important for him to go into the class with enthusiasm and model the behavior he wants because if he shows that he is excited to be there and that Algebra is fun, it could rub off on the students and they will know the type of behavior he expects.

Another type of modeling that he uses is peer modeling. In the lesson plan he has volunteer students come up to the board and do a problem several times; till the volunteer and the rest of the students in the class understand completely how to do the problem. This is beneficial for the students because not only do they get the problem explained to them; they can rehearse the information to stay in their long term memory. They also get encouraged about Algebra because they see one of their peers up there doing it. This is important because it raises the confidence of the other students because they realize that people there age can be good at it. This also helps the volunteer self-efficacy because they realize that if they are able to demonstrate it to the class, then that means they are really good at the subject. Also having student volunteers encourages the student s to participate in class, because students will realize it is fun to participate.

He also does cooperative groups for an assignment. Each of the students gets the same grade no matter how much work they did. This is beneficial because it gives the students opportunities to learn from their peers and also to learn to be reliable. Students that do not know how to do problems will benefit from this, because they will be able to be taught the information from a different perspective that the teacher was not able to do. This is important because students learn at different rates then other students, and this could help them get caught up.

In the overview section of the lesson plan he states that students can be afraid of Algebra because information could have been thrown at them that was out of their zone of proximal development. This lesson plan has the grade levels of three, four, five, six, seven, and eight; if this is the case the lessons or problems that are going to be taught have to be different, because if information is taught to students that are out of their zone of proximal development they will struggle and become frustrated. That is why it is important not to use the same problems for grades three through eight because both of their zone of proximal development is totally different.

The way to help students through struggling with information that could be challenging for them, though, would be to use scaffolding. He mentions in the lesson plan that he would progressively work through the concepts of the equations so that the students will know the information better. Scaffolding is beneficial because it goes step by step through the equations, and doing so will help the students ask any questions if they get confused on any of the problems they might have; and also they will feel more comfortable because they would have someone to help them all the way through problems and not have to do it all by themselves.

He also is using information processing very well in the lesson plan, because most of the information he presents will go into long term memory because of the strategies that he uses. In the lesson plan he says that he will present the information orally, on the chalkboard, and through hands on activities so that he will cover all the ways students might prefer how to learn. He never explains how he would present the information orally, but when he does he should orally present the information by elaborating on the subject or by associating it to something that is familiar to the students. This helps the students because most students will not pay attention to something that does not relate to them; so by associating the information to them makes them become more interested in the subject. For example, if he were to be explaining a problem he might want to use sports or music in word problems to try to keep the interest of the students.

That is the same for doing the work on the board or the computer, seeing it visually is usually the best way to process information but it would help for him to elaborate and associate it to the students. Sometimes teachers just put it on the board and do not elaborate, which causes the information to be in short term memory but not long term memory. He could do this by having pictures or by teaching it orally he could put real world examples into what he is trying to teach. He also uses different objects like cubes, the balance, and pawns to help show the equations. This is associated with elaborating because he would have done the problem on the board, and then he elaborated on the subject by using the cubes to demonstrate how to do the problem.

He also lets the students use the pawns, the balance, and the cubes to do their group work with. This is important because the students learn by doing hands on activities, which means that the students are able to use maintenance rehearsal because they would be able to do the problem as many times as they wanted. Doing this type of rehearsal will help the students turn the information from short term to long term information.

He also presents in the section tying it all together that the students will have a class discussion about what they learned, and he hopes that this will help them further know what the information is about. The reason that he hopes they will start to know what it is about is, because they will be able to discuss their questions and answers with him and their fellow classmates. The final discussion for the students is important because they are able to elaborate on the information and rehearse it with the class; which in the long run will make them remember it longer and also have a better schema about the subject, or problems. The students are able to attach meaning to the problems by discussing it with their classmates because they are able to use examples from their own life; and they also put the information into their own words.

At the end of the lesson plan he describes that he will put the students into groups to work on problems together. Each person will have a job to do and the grade they get will be the grade for everyone. He explains in the lesson plan that if one person had to do all the work and got answers wrong then everyone will get that grade. This part of the lesson plan is the part I do not agree with. The reason I do not agree with this is because throughout the whole lesson plan he talked about how he wanted to make all of the students feel comfortable, and to not discourage them about Algebra. Doing this, though, would put so much stress on the students to get the right answer which could cause them to believe that Algebra is just another stress. Also they could take not knowing how to do a problems like it was a punishment or a positive punishment, because they could be getting a bad grade even if they tried hard or not. This could be dangerous because having school work turn into a punishment will make the students not want to learn it anymore and also could cause them to be afraid of it again. Even though that way might make sure that all of the students do all of the work. At the same time a person in the group that is really good at doing the equations might just do them all by themselves, because they do not want to get a bad grade. I think there could be two ways that he could have done the grading system. He could have gone around to all of the groups and graded them based on their effort and not on the solution, and then brought the group together and each group would have to put one solution on the board and explain it to the class. This will help the class review and rehearse the problems, and also it is good because the students will be modeling the proper way to do the problems. Another way to assess the students would be for the group to do the problems, and at the end of the day have the students self assess themselves. This will cause the students to actually think of what they contributed to the group. On top of a self assessment they can have the people in the group grade their group members based on their participation in the problems. This would be beneficial because the group members are really the only people who know who tried their hardest on the problems and who did not. In the end this will force the students to give it their all the whole time.

The lesson plan that I analyzed had many benefits for the students, but also at the same time there was problems with some of his strategies. The thing that stuck out to me the most was that the teacher made it a point to get the students involved in all the activities, so that the students just did not have to sit there and listen to him talk.

www.eduref.org/cgibin/printlessons.cgi/Virtual/Lessons/Mathematics/Algebra/ALG0001.html