Dave_Johnson_Journal1_Spring09

In today’s lesson, my cooperating teacher was teaching a math lesson to the class. The focus of this lesson was on the use of the protractor as well as using it to determine if angles were acute, right, or obtuse. She used vocabulary such as “intersection” and “vertex” in the lesson and periodically stopped herself during the lesson to see if the students were paying attention and understanding the material. She had them do a few problems with their protractors and went around the classroom to see how the students were doing. While visiting with the students, the teacher kept her eye out for any possible mistakes students might be making when measuring, such as counting the wrong numbers on the protractor that would cause a student to believe that an obtuse angle is 55 degrees. These are simple mistakes that are easily fixed because the teacher is assessing how they are doing right there and providing additional instruction, instead of just throwing a test at them and leaving no room for improvement. With certain math problems, she had everybody raise their hands if they thought that the angle was acute, right, or obtuse. In this way, she could see which students were on track and which students needed more help and assess how much more instruction was necessary to get them all on track. She also told me later during the visit that this material will be on a benchmark test at the end of the chapter. With these various forms of assessment, my cooperating teacher is simultaneously instructing toward constant assessment as an improvement tool as outlined in the Wiggins test while simultaneously preparing them for the mandatory end point tests.