Chelsea Mueller ELD 375: Dr.

Bulgar April 25, 2013 Reflection The lesson I taught was taught on April 11th, 2013. This lesson was taught to the entire class as an inquiry lesson. The lesson was taught after the division test as a review to see what they learned. It was taught from 11:30-12:10. The objective of the lesson was for students to determine the divisibility rules for the numbers two, five and ten. The students definitely met my expectations. The students formulated the rules on their own. Normally, at this time the children are antsy and eager to get to lunch, but surprisingly the students were quiet and eager to learn. The students had to pay attention to the numbers in the problem rather than dividing by two, five and ten. At first they seemed confused, but once they solved a few they determined a pattern and were able to solve the rest. The students were then able to verbalize what the exact rule was and how they discovered it. I was also walking around while they were doing their work and I was able to see if the students were on the right track. If students were confused I asked them questions like How did you get that number?, What do you see that is the same in this number compared to the others divisible by two?, and Explain to me how you got that. By asking the students these questions I was able to get them on track to solving the problem. When I went around the room for a second time I checked to make sure that all the students had the correct answer and they did. They were then given a challenge and asked to find the divisibility rules for the numbers three, six, and nine. This was a lot harder for the students to do. When they began to struggle, I asked questions about the problems. Each student raised their hand and wanted to give their answers. I also knew they met the goals because they were all able to explain their answers to me out loud without writing anything on the board. It is important that the students were able to explain their answers with words because that will help them with further problem solving.

The students were engaged during the lesson. Although they were supposed to be quiet they kept whispering to their partners about how to find the rules. Some students, after finding the rules for three, six, and nine tried to find a rule for the number four. This stood out to me because it shows that the students were eager to learn more information. The students seemed to really enjoy this lesson. In my next lesson I would review the rules for two, three, five, six, nine, and ten. Then I would give the students numbers greater than 100,000 and have the students determine what numbers they are divisible by. This will allow them to practice the rules just by looking at the numbers instead of computing. If I did this lesson again I would go over the rules for two, five, and ten after giving the students about ten minutes to solve. Then, I would start a class discussion about the rules for three, six, and nine by giving clues. These clues would include: what do these numbers have in common?, if I split the number apart for example 3612 and make it 3_6_1_2 what can I put in between each number?. These clues might lead the students in the right direction for the number being divisible by three, six and nine instead of them going into it blindly. By writing this reflection I have learned that I would change how I approached the challenge numbers. I would not let them go into it blindly. I would give the students clues. Since this was an inquiry based problem I did not want to give them any guidance I wanted them to find the rules on their own, that is why they did it this way. If this was not an inquiry based problem, then I would give them guidance and clues along the way. I also learned that students like a challenge and that they enjoyed figuring the rules out on their own instead of the rules being given to them.