Blog Phase II: Reflections on Micro Lesson 2's Implementation

Instructional Decisions/Teaching (InTask Standard # 9):

For the most part, everything went well with the lesson; our classmates/students seemed to like the idea of the lesson concerning using the QR codes. Although it went well, we did have a hiccup during the lesson. Our provided answer key and questions did not match up, as one student pointed out. I believe this could have been avoided if one person did all of the typing or if we had done a more thorough proof reading as a group.

I believe our activity was a fun way to address the chosen standard and did a good job of focusing on and fulfilling our objective. The one modification that did have to be made during the implementation of the lesson was that concerning the mistake we, the teachers, made by not matching the one question and answer. We would need to understand that the students’ answer would not match the answer key due to the wording of the math sentence.

Mechanics:

The technology piece of this lesson required tablets, or smart phones, in order to scan the provided QR codes. When the QR codes were scanned, the students were provided with a math word problem which they would have to solve. The last QR code provided to the students was an answer key; the students were intended to use this in order to grade themselves, realize their mistakes and show how they fixed them. The QR codes were used by both the students and teacher because the students were receiving their assignment through the codes and the teacher was given the benefit of having the students grade themselves. The tablets, or smart phones, were used solely by the students.

I believe my lesson, if fully carried out, would have been within the the correct time frame because it would have taken students an appropriate amount of time to find the “hidden” QR codes, scan and solve them. I imagine the students would not waste much time hanging around one code because they would have the desire to seek the next one.

Assessment of Learning (InTask Standard # 6):

All in all, our students/classmates did well. Given that this was a low skill set for our audience this was expected. Again, the only issue that we had was the word problem and answer which did not match. The answer key stated that the equation was 34 – 25 which would yield an answer of 9, but the actual word problem created the equation (UNKNOWN) – 34 = 9, therefore the unknown the students were solving for was 43. After this was brought to our attention, we expected to have an answer for the fourth equation which did not match our answer sheet. Also, one of the students wrote the equations without using an unknown, which was the focus of the lesson plan. Although this student produced the correct answers, we wanted the process to include equations that represented the unknowns. I attribute this to the lesson being a bit out of context for some of our students/classmates, particularly since we did not teach the full lesson. Overall, I think this lesson would do well in a real second grade classroom.

What did you learn from designing and teaching this lesson and how will you use this in the creation of future lessons/learning activities?

I learned that you should ALWAYS proofread yourself and your lessons in order to prevent confusion in both you and your students. I will absolutely be using QR codes in future lessons. I think they are a fun way to get students moving and excited about learning. They are simple enough to use for both the students and teacher!