Last week I set two goals for myself. One, was to try to put an emphasis on the students being well-rounded. I believe I accomplished this by including lots of real life situations into my lessons. Not only were the examples relatable to the student's present lives, but more importantly their future. I also made sure I included a couple days of partner and group work to reinforce what they have been learning in class, regarding percents. People were put in partners/groups of people they wouldn't typically hand-pick. I made it clear that sometimes in life we will have to work with people we don't necessarily agree with, but we need to make sure we can work appropriately together. The students did a very nice job with this. The second goal I made was to plan plenty of activities for chapter 8. First of all, I am ahead of schedule. But more importantly, the students need to have a firm grasp on the concept of percents. I planned two days last week where the students worked in partners and groups on worksheets. Once they simply did the all the worksheet assigned. Another time, partners solved one problem then wrote their solution and how they got it on mini white boards and explained them to the class. Another time, they had a competition of who could solve a group of problems in a group the fastest while being correct. If even one was wrong they had to go back and figure which one(s) were wrong as a group and fix it.
Having to set a couple goals for this coming week I choose to make a goal of using multiple types of assessment for the students. I am going to look at my regular math classes and hope to do several forms of assessment with them. They will still have their daily problems, which will be scored for the week, they have a couple nights of regular worksheet homework. I also plan to have them make a concept poster as an assignment. Finally, they will have an assignment of using percents by ordering off menus then figuring out coupons, tax, and tip. This is something people use everyday, which hopefully they will enjoy. A second goal for myself this week is to get through the Honor's class with finishing up learning about solving by completing the square and then learning how to solve by the quadratic formula. I am researching some techniques to teaching this currently so I want to make sure I come up with some fun things that will let them remember how to do solve with these two methods.
Competent teachers should understand various formal and informal assessment strategies and be able to use them to support the continuous development of their students. I personally hate the stigmatism that some people believe that "they are just not good at math". I believe that all students can do math. One reason I think many students check out of math after elementary school is because they get bored with how math is taught. No one wants to sit in class all day take notes then go home and do math homework for an hour or so. By using different methods of assessment and coming up with fun and exciting ways to use math is a critical part, for me, of becoming a math teacher. Hopefully, I can break some students of this stigmatism and let them really enjoy math. Activities and projects are just some of the fun informal and formal ways of making math fun. If teachers would let students use their creative talents more, I think math would be more fun for many students. That's where the idea of the concept poster came for this coming week. Last week the honors worked in groups with "math eggs". I simply had an easter basket full of easter eggs with math problems in them. They seemed to enjoy this review activity. With the SmartBoard I was able to include a simple memory game at the end to check for understanding informally with the regular math classes. These are just a few of my recent ideas.
My cooperating teacher has been more than willing to let me try any activities that I want with the students, plus she has been a plethora of information and activities to me. The menu activity for this coming week is from another of her past student teachers, it just has been updated now recently. My placement has been a great way to show me the opportunities I have now and in the future to work with the kids in all sorts of different ways. In my placement, I have been lucky to have a paraprofessional in the room with me when I have students that are on IEP's. She has been wonderful. I have not been lenient on them in any way. I call on them all the time to help me solve in class problems and examples. I can pick-up easily on how well they are understanding things and I am blessed to have a paraprofessional who is competent and goes back the next morning and confirms and reemphasizes what we did in class with the students.
Some times time affects student learning. For instance, this week with completing the square. In my honor's classes the first day of this topic I couldn't even get through one full example because of all the questions. Then we ended up running out of time and I felt bad that the students had to leave class confused. The next day we worked more and it ended up being successful, but it was frustrating to me that the students were frustrated because of lack of time to finish what we started. I was at a loss, I didn't not want to answer questions, but at the same time needed to get through examples. It was a hard call on my part, but it ended up working out!
Tammi, I think you have the right attitude that all students can learn math. As a teacher you need to believe that they can all learn; otherwise you would give up on some of them. At the same time you need to realize that it is much more difficult for some than for others. Our brains actually may be wired differently. Maybe that's why Gardner came up with his idea about multiple intelligences. I'm glad you realize that having a variety of ways to teach is a better approach than doing the same thing all the time.
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