Overall, I thought we did an okay job with the lesson. Having been in charge of the demo, I felt that using colored paper and showing the steps by labelling the sides of the squares and rectangles could have helped students visualize it better. If I used colored paper, I could have stuck it on the whiteboard and labelled the sides with a marker. Also, someone put a comment about erasing the board too early, and I have taken note of that. Having taught in a classroom of grade 11s before, I found it actually a lot harder to teach in the classroom full of math students. I found that grade 11s are more interactive with the content because they are there to learn, while teaching it to math students who already know the concepts can be less engaging. When my groupmates explained the algebra part, I felt like they could have constantly linked it to the geometric representation to help students visualise and understand the connection. That is why I spontaneously stepped in to explain the connection to the geometric representation. But having stepped in a little too late, grade 11 students could possibly be confused.
Overall, I love the ideas we had and thought the geometric representation was unique, but I think that there could have been more organization and communication between the groupmmates on each others part and tying it all together.
Good lesson and good, thoughtful comments on the way it all went. I liked the structure of your lesson, starting from that very interesting paper construction that showed the relationships well. I can certainly understand your wish to connect your co-teachers' algebraic explanations with the geometric explanation you taught. However, your jumping in on other people's explanations wasn't the best decision, as it sometimes looked like you were trying to pre-empt them! Most of the time you'll be teaching on your own and this won't come up, but do be aware in a co-teaching situation that you have to give your colleagues their space! Good thoughts about using coloured paper and labelling to clarify the ideas.
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