Creating Lesson Plans

Creating the first lesson plan was a challenge for me. I wanted to do a lesson plan on integers. My students struggled to remember the "rules" for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing integers. It is so critical to all future math courses, because from the time we talk about them until forever, they will encounter positives and negatives. I wanted it to be tight (not as in cool) and very focused. I was constantly refining and refining the task. In fact I totally changed the task for the refined lesson plan. I struggled to know when to introduce terms and explanations and when to let the students discover. In the end, I feel like I developed a plan that would be student centered and relevant to the students.