3.0+Field+experience+first+reactions

Write a few thoughts on your first teaching episode.........

Today was very interesting to say the least. During first period I had the chance to observe Hailey. This class period was very encouraging as the three students were eager to learn. They were very good in participating in discussion. Students were very willing to use the pattern blocks in attempt to find answers to the questions Hailey had asked. They wanted to invert and multiply to find a few of the answers, but after some direction they would go back to using the pattern blocks and drawing to find an answer. I think the most encouraging thing that was occurring was the discussion that went on between the students. One student “built” on what another said to add his understanding and clarify what the student before him said. It was nice to see the students excited to discuss their math. This gave me so much hope for the group that I would have second hour.

The group of students I had in second hour provided a very unique challenge for me. They seemed very reluctant to participate and struggled to answer focusing questions. To me it seemed as though the procedure was good enough for them. All they wanted to do was find the answer. As soon as they found an answer they were satisfied and called it good. They didn’t want to discuss it. One of the kids in my group refused to talk as the other two kids criticized her learning style. Though I told those kids to stop, I couldn’t ever get the other student to participate. These other two students got sick of me asking the why questions. It seemed impossible to get them to focus, I asked funneling questions for most of the hour. This group didn’t particularly enjoy using the pattern blocks, and I don’t think they understood much of what we were trying to accomplish. It was very difficult to get them to even draw pictures to represent what we were doing with the division problems. I was very frustrated throughout the hour with the lack of effort the students wanted to put forth. What do you do with a group that really doesn’t want to put the effort demanded of them? I think it was hard seeing students so eager to participate in first hour, and then seeing the complete opposite the next hour. I was very disheartened after the hour.

Mike Freeland I enjoyed the field experience. I was nervous going into the class at first but I eventually pulled myself together. Tim had the opportunity to work with the first group of students which wereacceleratrd math learners. Paying close attention to hoe Tim handled his group of students made me feel more confident lead a group once my turn came. Tim students were great listeners and they seemed to grab the concepts really well. He used instances of focusing and funneling problems to help guide the students through their work. I felt he did an awesome job handling the group The second group which had majority special needs students was what i was placed in. My students were cool in a sense. I had one student who couldn't stop talking about ings that were not math related. I also had a genius in my group because for whatever reason he always found the right answer way before any of the other students blto think about it. I had to use more funneling questions than foucusing just to help the students understand what wad going on. I had the genius help the other students so they could understand the work from one of their peers. I was still able to get all the studbrts engaged however, it took sometime for me to help them understand the jist of what were getting through to each problem but we eventually all came to an understanding.

Fredrick Martin

Well, teaching at the middle school was definitely an experience! This was my first time teaching a lesson to actual students. I have done numerous lessons teaching other college students, but never something like this. So going into it I was pretty nervous and did not know what to expect. As soon as I met my first hour group of students, the nerves went away, and teaching just felt natural. My students did an awesome job of making sense of division. They got into excellent discussions, had disagreements, and backed up their problems with justification. I was so proud of these students! First hour was such an exhilarating experience! I could not wait to observe the second hour students as they tackled the same lesson.

Then second hour came along and brought me back to the reality of teaching. Not all students are going to enjoy math or grasp concepts as fast. Some students need a little more direction and attention. How are we supposed to handle a situation like that? We only had to teach three students, so we could provide some individualized instruction. But if the majority of the class needs individual instruction to succeed, how do you accommodate that? Teaching requires flexibility, patience, and the ability to adapt a lesson to a variety of learning styles.

I am glad that we got the chance to experience both ends of the learning spectrum. Second hour made me realize that teaching is not always going to be easy. Some days are going to be really hard. I can see why some teachers don’t make it past their first year. If you have the mindset that your students are going to be like first hour and end up getting a class like second hour. That’s a pretty rude awakening. But, overall, I enjoyed the experience, and can confidently say that I’m on the right career path!

Hailey McDonell My experience in the classroom was amazing and I felt it went very well. This is the first time I was able to work with students of that age; usually I have worked with either elementary school age or high school. I was a bit nervous because I was working with the advanced class (first period), but I was shocked at how ti went. My main fear was not having enough to do and not having enough to talk about. Mandi and I came prepared with three questions and my thought was the first group was going to fly through them and the second was going to struggle. I was right and wrong with this prediction. My class did not just go through the algorithm motions but rather took what I asked them to do and did it with flying colors. I asked them to use a picture to solve and explain what I gave them. Not only did they do this but they took it a step further. I was amazed at their own discussions with one another about why something was the way it was and how they could make sense of it. I feel confident that at least three of the four students I worked with walked away from my lesson with a little more information and knowledge under their belt. On the other hand, while watching Mandi teach those student who were labeled "special needs", I was right in thinking they would take a little longer on the problems. However, I was very pleasantly surprised at how they too engaged in discussion about why things were what they were and what was the best solution. Both groups used their pictures to explain. In the second hour, one student even said she was bad at math but she was the one coming up with the solutions. Seeing the lightbulb moments in the classroom was extremely rewarding and I know they gained something from our lesson. Katey Cook

I feel as though it was great to get both ends of the spectrum; however I found it more difficult than I thought. I taught the first class and it seemed to go to well. I noticed only one of the students struggled with the concept and the math but on the opposite side of the table we seemed to have the brilliant student who knew it all and could explain it in student friendly terms much better than I could. I believe the only true discussion that came out of it was the idea that on the third problem I believe we as the teachers made an error and said “how many batches will each get”, instead of “how many cookies will each get”. Then they simply went in circular arguments that it could not be done because we had not provided enough information to them, versus whether or not they should use the numbers from before. After I reviewed the problem at home I found out it was the former and not the latter it makes me think that I may have reduced it to a simple procedure. I am sure that I have much more to learn about how I control the classroom discussion.

I also felt as though when I watched Marcus teach the lower level students I found myself wanting to interject many times and caught myself before I did many times. I found that they struggled much more than the previous class because they may not have had the same experience with being allowed to struggle with math. They were quite easily confused and although they may have gotten it wrong only one student really disengaged right away. I felt that Marcus handled it well because he tried everything he knew he could to re-engage that student. It was interesting to see that these students focused heavily on getting the right answer and not the process.

Denise Slate

Going into this first visit, I felt pretty confident about teaching this lesson. Katey and I had written our lesson, discussed it thoroughly, practiced it on Tim and Fred, and presented it to our MATH 3500 class. I was very excited to have my first experience teaching in a real classroom!When we arrived at the school, I was a little disappointed to realize we had not brought a copy of our lesson plan with us. However, we still had our worksheet problems to give the students, so we were able to use these as our reference tool.

Katey taught the lesson during the first period. Since these were accelerated math students, they seemed to understand the concepts and methods she presented. Additionally, they were able to articulate their thinking in a fairly clear way both to us and to their peers. They worked well in pairs, too. I appreciated hearing the different methods they were able to use to solve the problems Katey presented. By the end of the lesson, they had come to the conclusion (and had been convinced by their peers) that dividing by one half and multiplying by two give the same result. I was very impressed with Katey's teaching ability, too. She asked extremely relevant, high-quality questions that pushed the students to make sense of the mathematical ideas rather than rush to find the correct answer. The students' willingness to contribute and participate encouraged me as well.

My turn to teach came in the second period. Mr. Wine warned us that the majority of these students had special needs, and it was intriguing to see the drastic contrast between this class and the first one. In the areas of mathematical knowledge and student involvement, these students did not have as many initial advantages as the students in first period did. Unlike a few of my fellow teachers who taught during this period, I actually enjoyed working with this group.The three girls in our small group were very nice, and by the end, I was able to get them all to engage mathematically. We had some very productive discussions, especially about why their pictures made sense. (I admit that I did have to ask a girl a few times, "Jenna, are you still with us?" after she had been staring at the floor or into space.) At one point, we seemed to be stuck on dividing by two thirds, but we were able to help students realize that two thirds is two sections of one third each, and this was significant progress. And by the end, each of the three girls had successfully explained her reasoning at some point during the class. We only finished two problems in this class, whereas we completed all three during first period. Yes, this was challenging, and at some points it was a struggle. However, just because something isn't as easy as we anticipate it to be doesn't mean we should give up or put in less than our best effort. Both groups of these students are inherently valuable as people, and we need to give them our respect by doing as much as we can to help them grow in their learning and understanding.

I thoroughly enjoyed being in a middle school classroom and working with these students. What was really encouraging for me was to see someone who didn't understand start to "get it" after a few questions from either Katey or myself and some persuasion from his or her classmates. Even if this did not result in total understanding on their behalf, it was rewarding to see progress that was made, no matter how small. I certainly think that students can be valuable sources of mathematical knowledge, and this was confirmed through my experience today. Essentially, this first instance of actually teaching in a real classroom validated my career path; teaching is definitely what I want to do!

TORI WARD

Walking into day I felt that Kaitlin and I had prepared ourselves decently well. We each took home some pattern blocks and practiced our 4 problems. When it came time for me to teach the lesson first hour I felt confident. Our group had three boys who were mostly quiet. They sat patiently and were very respectful for all but one moment of the lesson. I started off asking them some of the things they knew about fractions and if they had ever used these pattern blocks in any math class before. All three of them recognized the blocks but had never really used them in any class before.

Once we got started pulling out the blocks I intentionally gave them some time to play with the blocks and build things to get that out of their system. I presented the first problem and the kids jumped on board with using the blocks to show how to divide a fraction by a whole number. After the second problem I asked them if they knew a way to double check their answer. One boy jumped right to the invert and multiply algorithm. I was even more shocked by the second boy who converted the fraction into a decimal and used long division; I hadn't anticipated that AT ALL. All three of my boys stayed engaged for the 4 problems we had prepped. They were so focused that we FLEW through the prepped problems. I had my back to the clock and didn't realize I had just about 1/3 of the class time left and didn't have any more material prepped. This was the point I started to lose their attention which was a little disheartening. I started improvising and making up new problems to have them do. After a few more problems, I changed the size of the "whole" and challenged them to try and show the 4 problems, if possible, with only one yellow hexagon as the whole.

I worked with the first hour group, so I found that the challenge was actually engaging them in wanting to know exactly why is it that this kind of division made sense. Because the students in my group were already comfortable with numbers, they would rather write the division down and solve it numerically instead of puzzling the answer out with the manipulatives. I introduced the idea of dividing 10 dimes into two groups of five and additionally, as five groups of two. I was mostly pushing them towards seeing 2, the denominator, is also the number of coins in a group if you split 10 into groups of 5. I think that I may have rushed through that part, as when we moved on to actual fractions, I got a lot of deer-in-the-headlights type looks. After a few unsuccessful attempts at focusing the students on the idea that ½ dollar splits into groups of ¼dollars when there are two groups, I actually pulled the group back to rehash the opening idea. Soon after, the students saw that two groups of one fourth made one half, and I asked them to write this division down on their scrap paper. Once they were able to see the fractions, I asked them if the rule would give us a similar answer as our reasoning. As the group struggled with the first problem I was hesitant to move to a more difficult problem, but the students pressed for something more challenging. I then reviewed one-fourth and one-fifth of a dollar with nickels and asked everyone to model one-fourth divided by one-fifth. I was actually amazed at how quickly they solved this one. They noted quickly that five nickels went into four nickels more than once, but the trick was figuring out what to do with the last nickel. I pushed the students to see that this was one out of four nickels instead of one out of five, and they were able to put together the mixed fraction 1¼, which they could then rewrite as 5/4. We saw that the rule worked in this case as well. After going through another example, I wanted to wrap things up, so I once again brought the group back to our initial example. We talked about how you can rewrite 10=10/1 and 2=2/1, and what the rule would say about dividing these two fractions. By the end of the session, I feel that the students understood that dividing by an integer was the same as multiplying by it’s reciprocal. One student questioned if this was true only for evens and I urged her to try 10/3 and 10(1/3). I was able to mention that this idea could also be applied to fractions, as you are simply multiplying by the reciprocal when dividing fractions, but I am not sure if everyone caught it before we began packing up at the end of the hour. Overall, it was an overwhelming but exciting experience. I think that the students were able to make a few connections that they hadn’t before, and despite my nervousness, I think I was able to institute a few things that we discussed in class. Though I have much room to improve, I feel that it was a good start.

Valerie Gipper

I felt that I could have been better prepared for this first field experience. Even though we did take the pattern blocks home and practice, I feel I was still under prepared. For example, we came in with only 4 problems thinking that it would have taken much longer for the students to grasp the idea of the pattern blocks. We then found ourselves making up problems on the fly in order to continue teaching division of fractions.

Although I felt that the 2nd hour, which I taught, seemed to have a better understanding of the pattern blocks, although still not complete understanding. I felt that they appreciated a manipulative more than 1st hour. I also found myself not being very patient with respect to giving the students time to think. I think Katey mentioned in class today that the students in second hour seemed to wait for direction and not try to start a problem on their own which I agree with. I also feel that I tried to use focusing questions but, I did not feel very successful and felt that I did more funneling. Overall, it was a good learning experience and I’m looking forward to improving and being able to teach one lesson twice so that I can find what may work better. Kaitlin Froehlke

We had the students use the pattern blocks to show how to divide fractions, and our introduction was to have the students play with the blocks and come up with a design or build something to share. For our launch we had the students play with the blocks more by figuring how many blocks it took to make one hexagon. Our hope was that the students played with the blocks enough so that they would focus more on the lesson instead of playing with the blocks. This worked great, but once they figured the answer out they just wanted to play with the blocks more instead of explaining to other students. I taught the first hour and the students where able to figure out the task pretty quickly by performing the rule of multiplying the reciprocal and then trying to put the blocks to match the answer. One of the things that was a little bit of a challenge for them to understand with the blocks is that we used the whole as two hexagons instead of just a single block and it was hard for them to understand that two blocks make one whole.

Bret Van Zanten