LESSON STAGES - VIDEOS

Lesson Stages - A Collection of Videos

To create order and routine in my classrooms, I have set stages in place for every lesson. Find below a description of each stage followed by a video of what each stage looks like.

Clip 1 - Settling Students / Homework Check

Students need to have something to do straight away when they first enter the classroom. This can be something as simple as opening their exercise books, ruling off from last lesson and placing today's date and heading at the top of their exercise book page. Alternatively, if homework was assigned during a previous lesson, the first thing I tend to do each lesson is check the completion of homework.

In this video, you will observe me going about the room stamping the completed homework and the homework diary of each student. You may notice on the classroom projector screen a visual showing students how I want them to present their work when I come to check it. This gives students a visual reinforcement of my verbal instruction to get out homework for checking.

In my classes, each student has a specific table group role. It is the role of the Resource Manager to collect any resources (glue, scissors, graph paper etc) from the class resources shelves. During the video, you will observe a female student leaving her desk to collect glue from the resources shelves for one of her group members. It is a classroom norm for Resource Managers to do this without having to ask for permission from the teacher.

Clip 2 - Introducing the Lesson / Lesson Objectives

Now that the students are settled and have their books open in front of them, I introduce the lesson. According to Willam and Black (1998) in their work on Assessment for Learning, students need an explicit statement at the start of the lesson as to what they will be learning. I often reinforce this statement with a visual, as seen in the video. The lesson shown in the clip is on similar triangles, using resources I developed myself in response to the learning needs of the class being taught. Typically I would have students write the learning objective in their exercise books, although this is not shown in the video.

At St. Stephen's International School, I was catering primarily to classes with a high English as a Second Language component. Usually in the introductory part of the lesson I would also discuss any new vocabulary students will come across and give an explanation of anything in a text that may be culturally specifc (e.g. Easter celebrations). This wasn't necessary in today's lesson.

Clip 3 - Task for the Lesson

In my class room I typically use tasks which;

are open ended
a solution can be derived in many different ways
are group worthy
are accessible to all students

In this clip, I have designed a task which allows students to be creative in how they go about answering the question 'find the length of side d without the use of a ruler'. The great thing about this task is that every student would have drawn a slightly different diagram, meaning every student will arrive at a different answer. This means the task focus moves from 'just finding the right answer' to actually understanding what methods work / don't work. Here in this lesson there is an element 'productive struggle', meaning students actually have to think through different possible approaches rather than just follow steps outlined on the whiteboard by the teacher.

Clip 4 - Setting Students to Work

Now it's time for students to get working. During this stage, while students focus on the task at hand, I focus on circulating about the classroom. I am very purposeful in how I move around the classroom by keeping in mind the following guidelines;

First lap around the classroom - I focus on making sure everyone is on task and following instructions. I try to avoid answering student questions at this time as my goal is to make sure all students have settled down and started working on the task at hand.

Second lap around the classroom - During this phase of the lesson, I tend to focus on asking questions to help students develop their understanding. If a group is stuck on a question, I usually start by asking the student in the role of group Facilitator to re-read the question aloud to their group. This helps a great deal in kick starting group discussion about the problem at hand.

My response to student questions tend to be questions that help students answer their own questions, rather than walking the student through all the steps of a problem and unwittingly taking away the opportunity for the student to think through the problem themselves. Another good technique is finding a student in the who has done a step correctly and asking them to show their work to the rest of their group. Clip 4 focusses on my second and third laps around the classroom.

Third and Fourth pass - I again listen carefully to student thinking and encourage them to move on to the next problem or extend their thinking. By this stage I find I am asking higher order thinking, extension or reflective type questions.

Clip 5 - Discuss Student Approaches

During Clip 4 you may have noticed I spent some additional time with a group of boys to the left of the class while I was circulating. One student in this group, Teng, had come up with an approach that gave a correct solution. The fact that Teng was a student with developing English as a Second Language skills made it all the more challenging for Teng to share with me his thinking.

After some prompting and rehearsing with him, Teng (with some reluctance on Teng's behalf) was finally willing to come to the front of the room to share his thinking.

I must admit, when Teng explained his thinking when sitting at his desk with the comfort of his friends around him, he gave a far better explanation than what he demonstrated at the white board at the front of the class. However, in the interests of developing classroom norms around the idea of students sharing their thinking with others, I think Teng's presentation was a step in the right direction for our class, albeit a small one.

Clip 6 - Brain Break

25 - 30 minutes into the lesson student energy levels start to faulter. It's at this juncture I do a quick brain break. Brain breaks are intended to get students up and out of their seats to enable some body movement by focussing on a physical activity. Brain Break activities I use are sourced from www.brainbreaks.blogspot.com. In the video below, students are doing the Brain Break 'Snap Wink'. It is also during the running of a Brain Break I sometimes get to do some quick classroom house keeping, such as wiping down the white board or distributing the next worksheet.

Note: - I had filmed a Brain Break during the Similar Triangles lesson but quality of the clip was poor. This Brain Break clip was taken from another lesson later that same day.

Clip 7 - Does Teng's Approach work?

Now refreshed from their Brain Break, students were given time to determine whether Teng's method would actually work. Remember, every student had a worksheet unique to that student as each student had ruled up their own diagram. Here I can be seen circulating the room confirming with table groups what their thinking is on Teng's approach - all students, except for those who made minor calculation or measurement errors, agreed the approach worked.

I then called the class to attention and presented two other methods. After the presentation I gave students a fresh worksheet (one that I had drawn up myself to save time) with workings of the three methods printed on blue paper. Students then had the opportunity to use any or all of these three methods to work out the length of side d in the new worksheet. One of the techniques I use to keep students on task is to run a timer on the board - you can observe this technique in the video.

End of Lesson Wrap Up & Next Lesson

The 50 minute lesson concluded with students having to produce two methods of being able to find the length of side d. This was to be handed in as a 'pass out' card in order to head out for lunch break. With students handing in their work, I was able to check the level of student understanding in today's class. This would be used to inform me of the next step in instruction for the next day's class.

I was satisfied with what students had achieved in this lesson. The majority of students had given at least two methods to find the size of side d. With students now having a 'gut feel' for how similar triangles and proportion works, I would then move into more formal methods of finding the length of side d when we came back for the follow up lesson. The next lesson would also include getting out into the school yard and estimating the height of trees using this method.

Lesson Reflection

What I was pleased about the lesson;

Students created their own worksheets based on their own measurements, thus making learning more authentic.
Worksheet was self correcting - if the student calculated the length of side d correctly then this would match their ruler measurement of side d.
The lesson reinforced the idea that there is never just one method to solve a math problem and with creative thinking, new approaches can be developed.
Lots of opportunity for students to think of alternative methods to solve the problem, engage in discussion with their table groups, compare ideas and have the opportunity to 'productively struggle' with the question without teacher intevention.

What I would like to have changed;

St. Stephen's International School, where this video was taken, has a high proportion of English as a Second Language students. To cater for students struggling with English, in these series of videos my lesson presentations were at a slower pace than when I would be teaching a class with a higher English language ability.
In my mathematics lessons I seat students in groups of four. Each student has a group role to play, including Facilitator, Resource Manager, Task Manager and Recorder/Reporter. The idea of these roles is to keep each student accountable for contributing to the learning of their own group and to maximise student 'on task' time. When watching these videos, I note some students not maximising the fulfilment of their roles and are spending time being distracted with other things. From this I note my students need more explicit teaching from me on the fulfilment of their roles.