After you get to know the class you are in during this semester, you will be revising your Math-Literature lesson plan.  Your revision will need to account for the following considerations:

• The class you are in this semester may be at a different grade level.  You need to make sure that the math connection for your lesson is appropriate to the class you will be teaching to.
• You will need to re-read your lesson plan, and you will need to re-read the lesson plan for that book that you were given last semester.  You need to carefully consider whether the changes you have made from the lesson plan you were given will be effective for the students you will be teaching to.

Things you may do:

• You may switch lesson plans or switch books with a classmate (if you wish to switch to an entirely different book, you should talk to me individually--there are several conditions that would need to be met by any book you switched to)
• You may use the lesson plan you were given to read, if you rewrite the plan in your own words, and cite the lesson plan as a source.

Things you must do:

• Write an explanation of why you are doing what you are doing with the lesson plan: how is the math appropriate for the grade level of the students? In what ways is it different from the lesson plan that you were given as a sample?  Why is the lesson plan you are going to use more appropriate for these students than the sample lesson plan? (hint: I expect the lesson you teach to be at least as good as the sample lesson.  This can be true because it is the sample lesson that you are using, or it can be true because you have made changes to make it work better for the students you will be teaching).
• Resubmit the lesson plan, and have it approved by me and your cooperating teacher.

Teacher Standard 6 reads: Teachers communicate well. The teacher uses effective verbal and nonverbal communication techniques as well as instructional media and technology to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom.

Key phrases are:

• verbal communication (yours, or the students under your direction)
  
• non-verbal communication (this means things like drawing and modeling--these are things that assist, not replace, verbal communication)
• instructional media and technology (if you are in a class with a SMART board, you will be creating a smart notebook to use in your lesson; if you are not, please make a survey of the technology tools you have available to you)
• active inquiry (in your lesson, children need to be actively discovering things about math)
• collaboration (in your lesson, children need to be working together for part of the class time)
• supportive interaction (in your lesson plan, you need to include plans for how you will direct student interactions as needed)

You will be writing two such lesson plans: one with a focus on properties in geometry, and one with a focus on measurement.  You should consult with your cooperating teacher about whether you will revise one of those to teach, or if you will prepare a lesson to teach based on materials that your cooperating teacher provides. 

The lesson plans you submit must contain both a section that describes the lesson itself, and a section that describes how your lesson will show how you meet teacher standard 6.

The details of the communcation lesson plan assignment.