Blog #10

The Best and Worst of It

As I have finished my first half of field, it has been a little of this: stressful, frustrating, dreaded, fun, enjoyable, and then I just can't wait for the end of the semester feeling. So here is an overview of the best and worst of what I have seen.

Best:

• I have seen some excellent classroom management skills
• Great ideas on how to organize what you want to teach and what you have to teach
• Good integration of curriculum(not the best, but better than what I have seen in the past)
• Great situations in which the teacher has had to improvise from what she was going to teach to something else(quick thinking skills)
• Excellent scheduling skills
• I hav taught 3 literacy lessons which all seemed to go quite well and I feel that not only did the students learn some useful information, they also had fun(that made me feel good)

Worst:

• Very unengaging math lessons
• I had one of my lessons cut short because the timing I needed wasn't given and although the learning outcome was there, we had to miss out on the fun game I had planned.
• I taught one PE lesson so far and although the students had great fun, there was way too much teacher involvement from the cooperating teacher, which made me feel that it wasn't my lesson. I do hope my next weeks lesson goes better.
• Clearly not enough differentiation within the class. Students are split only in two groups based on their readiness and this is hardly differentiating. (Although if you talk to the teacher, she thinks this is what differentiation means) I do not feel that it is my place to correct her.

Well, that is all for now. I do hope next week I only see the best of and not the worst of. And although this is a great learning opportunity for me, I really can't wait to get my own classroom so that I can start teaching the way I want to teach.

Blog # 9

In my student teaching, I have been observing the classroom and taking notes as to how I would differentiate if this were my classroom. I am going to be teaching a unit on math and I have been coming up with various ideas on how to differentiate the lessons. My unit for math will be on time. The unit will include students learning time on the half hour and quarter hour, minutes and how they relate to clocks and time, elapsed time and using a calendar. To take this unit and differentiate the lesson I feel that the best option for this particular lesson would be to use cubing for the students. Cubing works well with many content areas including math. For the one cube I would place on the sides:

1. A problem involving elapsed time for the students to solve.
2. Analyze how this problem helps us use mathematical thinking and problem solving.
3. Use comparison and contrast with time; for example compare 1:15 and a quarter after 1.
4. Use demonstration to how a person uses time in real life situations
5. Change the time involved in the problem and tell how the change affects the problem.
6. Have a story problem involving time.

One the second cube:

1. Have students write digital time into analog time
2. Have students write the minutes on a blank clock face
3. Have the student analyze time as to how long it would have them to do a particular task
4. Have students pair up cards that represent time
5. Have students contrast a.m. and p.m.
6. Have students write their daily schedule using time.

These cubes I would use for my lesson on time to the half hour and quarter hour. I would then create other cubes my remaining lessons in this unit on time.