This week I taught my first math lesson. Math has never really been my strong suit so I was admittedly a little nervous to teach this subject. That’s why I knew that I needed to get one of these lessons under my belt. Pre-internship seemed like the best time to try while I had my cooperating teacher and teaching partner on standby.

My professional development goal this week was to plan a lesson that had a strong Set, Development and Closure. I decided to use the lesson plan that I had presented in my night class on Tuesday. After rotating through with small groups and teaching it 5 times, I felt pretty good about it. It was time to see if it would go over just as well in Grade 1.

To begin my lesson, I presented a problem which had the students hooked right away and thrilled to help me solve it. For the development, I was pumped to show the class the manipulatives I brought in for them to try out while practicing the new math concept. They included toy cars, gems, plastic spiders, animals and dinosaurs. The students were engaged again and wanting to play. They really enjoyed the activity although they were a little louder and more rambunctious than expected. I followed up their practice time with an exit ticket to close, which proved to me that the students all understood what I had taught them. What more could I ask for?

In hindsight, I should have planned for more time to play with the toys so that they got it out of their system before trying to get them to practice. My math professor suggested allowing them time to play beforehand, however, if I were to teach this lesson again I would explain to the class that they would have time to play after we practiced, to give me a little more control.

Overall, I’m really happy with how it turned out. Although, as I should have guessed, teaching a lesson to groups of six 20 -year-olds in university is slightly different than teaching to a class of twenty 6-year-olds in Grade 1!