On to High School...

So getting back into the high school grove makes me miss middle school. I thought I would never really miss it. I just don't feel like I am making connections and relationships with students here at high school like I did in middle school. This might be because they are more subdued and ask less questions. However recently I did get talking to some students about my thesis on the average number of turns it takes to complete the game of candy land. I will have to share this fun fact when I introduce myself since it grabs students interest.

However I am really excited to teach two sections of Algebra Concepts next semester. That class has some of my favorite stuff in algebra included into the curriculum. Graphing equations, solving a system of equations, graphing inequalities, and graphing a system of inequalities. I loved graphing a system of inequalities because I always used different colors to shade the graph. I am going to bring in lots of color into my graphs for my students and make sure they use colored pencils as well.

However my other supervising teacher is still getting his teaching schedule rearranged. There is only one 47 minute period of calculus scheduled next semester. The students wanted more time to work with the difficult concepts and they are looking to add another period. So I will need to take one math class from him once his schedule is set. It will most likely be some basic algebra class which is cool with me because I love algebra. Hopefully I can bring in some Abstract algebra into the class as well. I am a little worried I will not have enough time to plan for this class since I won't have time to work with the curriculum and textbook until January 3rd.

I will also be working with the calculus class some once I have graduated and they have finished with the AP test. I am thinking of teaching them how to work with LaTeX and have them type up test corrections using it. LaTeX is used by professional mathematicians and almost every math textbook is written using the program. I think using it would allow students to understand how to problem solve when using technology and review math concepts. I think they will still be reviewing math problems as they type up old problems, but it will not be the focus of the activity. I think that they would love to spend some time in the computer lab learning something new after the test, but we will see. I will have to keep a vigilant eye on the use of facebook. I think I may introduce another math program that I used in my undergraduate program, but I am not sure what I would include just yet. I think I will have to talk to my professors and become more of an expert at the program. However playing around on the computers with math related programs that are used in college level math courses is something I hope the students will find interesting and will be able to learn from.

It seems that January 31st is drawing closer. I will become even more of a teacher after that time. I will be teaching three math classes for a whole semester. I think it will be a very different experience. It is also something I have dreamed of doing for over ten years. I am much more excited to work with the faculty, work in this high school, and teach this curriculum. Algebra is much more exciting and cool then stupid decimals. Now I just hope that I can show my students how exciting and cool algebra can be. I hope that I find my place and calling at the high school level.

My Final Day and Reflection

 On my last day I was sort of stupid and thought my students were passing a note. I took it away and put it in the recycling. My supervising teacher took it out and had the class pass it around again because it was actually a thank you note. I felt so bad about it when I opened it up to read it. It was very sweet and felt good to see the kids appreciate me. But I felt stupid for thinking it was a note.

 On my last day I played a math game called set with them. They seemed to like it. I asked them to step up to the front to find a set and often they got it wrong at first. I guided them to the answer so they didn't feel so bad. Everyone wanted to try and find a set in the cards. Play it online here.

So here is a reflection on my practicum time:

 During my practicum I could never really get my students to be quiet. They talked during tests and during my class. I think all of this talking may have thrown off my data. I did my best to be firm and get them to be quiet, but I did not have that command of the class. I also could not control the noise after the test. This loud testing environment may have impacted students testing abilities. I don’t think I observed them being quiet for my supervising teacher either, so I believe that this was not a group norm. I may not have this problem when I teach high school students. This just may be because they are sixth graders and have lots of hormones. If I was a student in that room I could not have worked in that class. I will need to work on being more firm about a quiet testing environment.

                I believe that I did too much direct instruction during my teaching. I was just more comfortable using direct instruction. I would have like to do more collaborative work, so that students were doing more of the learning and discovering knowledge for themselves. That is one of my theoretical beliefs that students need to discover and formulate ideas on their own. However I do not think the class had the group norms for doing collaborative work when I arrived. I therefore did not have time to teach them the group norms. I don’t think if I was ready to teach the group norms with everything else I had on my plate. I will have to make sure that I set up good group norms in my high school classroom and find ways to incorporate collaborative work into my curriculum.

                I also think I need to work on transitioning students from different activities. I had trouble giving directions and having students switch gears. It takes a lot of time to get the quiet and settled into the new activity. I think this is important to help them settle into the test and get the brains in gear. Plus that way I don’t have to say what page number and problem we are five different times. I will have to have a signal to help transition students and make sure my transition set is more solid.

               I will also have to make sure that I chunck up worksheets or assignments so that students do not get haywire after working on the same thing for too long. I learned that sixth grade students could not work on the same worksheet for very long. The next time I gave them a worksheet I made sure that I lead students through the worksheet step by step instead. This kept more students on task and most of them got the worksheet done. 

             After looking at my assessment data I saw real learning gains from students. I saw that the class as the whole improved their concept of decimal place value by a large amount. There was a 200 percent change from the pre test to the post test. I was really proud of that learning gain. However students were still struggling with adding and subtracting decimals that had a different number of place values. I think that is a hard concept to grasp when not using calculators and will take some time to understand. I will have to focus more on this learning target since it is what gives the students the most trouble.  I demanded my students to do this without a calculator so that they would become better mathematicians and have a solid foundation with decimals. However this is difficult and will take a while to learn. I did not think about how I would teach this concept and realized part way through that working with decimals with different place values was an important learning target. I think this showed me why teachers have to lay out concretely the learning goals and targets of each unit.

So all in all it was a difficult and stressful experience, but it was definitely worth while. I don't know how I would teach those students for longer than three weeks. I would like to teach at middle school because of the high energy, but some days that high energy is too much to handle. 

My Ninth Day

 So today is the day. I started out going over the warm-ups that were similar to the problems on the worksheet. I controlled the class pretty well and stopped talking. I had asked questions of the students as I did it. Then I did a few fraction problems with the class. The class thought they were easy and I had students eager to answer the questions. They are not normally that eager to answer the questions. I was glad to see that. So then I handed out the worksheet. The students all thought that it was a test. It took we a while to convince them it wasn't. The first ten minutes of the worksheet went well. However I let it get too loud. I had two students tell me we were too loud and realized that I should have done something earlier to control the noise. I knew it was going to be hard to get them back at this point, but I did my best. The worksheet did not take as long as I thought it would which also caused problems. I did get the smart student to help other students once they were done with the worksheet. I tried to help the student who has been absent for a long time, but the student was too frustrated and fed up to really do anything. So I let the student be. I did a good job about not letting every student leave my classroom for whatever reason they can think up. I however did not have any consequences for being out of their seat or talking. I talked with my adviser about having that line and the types of consequences I can use. I don't know if I can start handing out consequences and ramp up the rule now since I am almost done teaching this class. However it is something to keep in my mind for next semester. I have to have a firm line. I have to say sit back in your sit and warn them that if it happens again then there will be a consequence. I am just not comfortable with handing out consequences now, but I have been slowly realizing that I have to or else they will walk all over me.

My adviser and I also talked about how the last bit of the class went so poorly because they can't focus on the same activity for that long. Which I have began to slowly realize as I have been teaching. We have also talked about that in our Educational Technology class and other conferences. These students are of the digital age and are used to having information at the touch of a button. They play video games and surf the net. They except things to go fast and be entertained the whole time. So my adviser and I talked about having them do five problems in ten minutes then bringing the class back together to share answers or ask questions.So next week when I give them their performance assessment I will definitely chunk it out and separate it. I will also occasionally bring the class back together to talk about how it is going.

Another comment my adviser made was that I was standing up front next to the document camera too much. This is something that I have been struggling with. I am too attached to the front and the document camera. I need to walk around to the tables and talk to the class in the middle of the classroom. I know I should do it and have talked about how I should in classroom management class. However when you are thrown into the classroom you don't always remember to do everything. I think it is also just getting comfortable in the classroom and finding the moments you can move about the class.

So the class got a little crazy while my adviser was here. But I enjoyed talking through strategies to get better and helping me improve my skills. If I do a lesson similar to this again I now know that I have to keep an eye on the class as well as the individuals. I thought that it went very badly once I let the students go. However my adviser pointed something that went well that I had not thought of. I guess it is just because I focus on the negative. He said I really kept my calm and composure when the students were getting all crazy. So I think it went well. There were a lot of small things that I did well and there were other things that need to be improved. I now really understand how to improve my teaching and more about what a teacher has to constantly keep in mind.

I sort of wish I had been able to be observed earlier. I was too nervous for this and pushed it back as possible. I now realize that it isn't as scary as I would have thought and I would have benefited from having it earlier. I could have taken my advisers suggestions and implemented them and worked on them more. I can't really make any BIG changes now since my time is over. I do have things to keep in mind and be conscious of as I continue to teach.

My Eigth Day

Today was a little crazy, but I handled. I moved students into a new seating chart. I think I am done moving people and I have to enforce them not talking. I swear no matter who she sits next to she is talking. I will have to be on her. Some students said they couldn't sit in back because they can't see. I sort of just suspected that they didn't want to sit where I put them, but I honored that to move them on the other side of the classroom. Since I spent time moving them I had to cut a lot of the book work. I went too fast during the example problem. A lot of the students seemed to be engaged, but I have to stop and get everyone. We just barely finished the problem. I should have just done that problem with the class. I could have slowed down and asked more questions if that was the only thing we were doing. I sped through the problem cause I wanted to get through it because they will be doing a similar problem tomorrow. I worry if they will be able to do the problem tomorrow. Since I was speeding through the problem I was talking and writing too much. I didn't have my eyes on the class enough. I should have got up and walked around more. Also my notes for this problem weren't that organized. I think I need to do everything on lined paper to keep everything neat. I know this will be a continuing struggle to make my hand writing neat. However right now in my practicum I am doing most of my work on blank paper which does not help my writing. I need to be organized with my instruction, so that the students can be more organized. However I am not supposed to be completely organized since I am just starting out. So I am going with the flow as much as possible.

The good outcomes of today is that I think I have got a lot of my students writing more stuff down. I think they are learning how to take notes. I had students who are normally disengaged writing everything down and asking questions about stuff. So the behavior of writing notes is good, but we will see how much they retain.

Tomorrow I will have to check with all the students as they do their work. I will try to direct them to their notes when they get to the similar problem. All tomorrow will be review and modeling. Then they will work on a worksheet. I will make sure they take notes at the beginning of class. Then direct them to those notes first when they begin to ask questions. I know who is not getting it and I will do my best to check in with those students and make sure they got it.

Since I am being observed tomorrow I was supposed to meet with my adviser at the end of this day. However we went into Lockdown level 1 for about the last ten minutes of class. The cops were dealing with some incident in the neighborhood south of the school. They called and said we should go on lockdown. We closed the door, kept all the students in the classroom, and closed the shades. Since we were on lockdown my adviser couldn't meet with me in person and I talked to with him about my lesson on the phone later. But the timing was just crazy. I have been here observing for a month and teaching for almost a month while I was here I have been a part of a fire drill and a lockdown.

So hopefully all goes well tomorrow because my adviser is coming to observe me. It should be an interesting and high energy.

My Seventh Day

So today I read to them. Although I went quickly through it. I also forgot that the document camera was zoomed in and they couldn't see the book I was reading from. I was hoping they would find it cooler, but of course I am just a geek. I wonder if they will like it when I refer back to it.

Class went well, but I had to repeat myself several times because students weren't listening. There was also confusion between the journal page we were in and the page of the textbook we were on. I made note in my head to make this more clear. I think it is something to consider when implementing math journals in class. I am doing research on the use of math journals. I will have to research how tho structure this better. I kind of know how the kids feel. I felt the same way in Teacher Research or Literacy class not knowing in which journal or notebook to write in. I am learning a lot about what is working with the journals and what is not working with the journals. Some students were really dragging their feet and didn't have their books, journals, or pencils. I think I caught students who weren't writing sooner and got them to get their journals sooner. I don't know how much they were writing. I think I have to get up and walk some more while I am waiting for them to copy stuff down. I noticed one student was writing more stuff down and I was glad to see that. Before he was talking too much and not writing down enough.

I had a lot of talking today though. I don't think it was one student specifically, but several students. I stopped what I was doing to talk to them about being respectful and asked for their attention. I told them that their behavior needs to improve because my teacher is coming to this class on Thursday. I threatened them with referrals as well. I don't know if it worked. I think I will have to real change up the seats, so that I follow through with changes that I talked about.

So all in all it wasn't a great day, but it wasn't exactly a bad day. I think I am getting a hang of it. I am not perfect and things aren't just like I want them, but that is the life of the practicum teaching. However I think I have really bounced back form that really bad day I had last week.

I am looking forward to what I have planned for my adviser because I think I am better at controlling a class when they are working on homework. I don't know how well I am doing with controlling the whole class during whole class direct instruction. This may be because I am used to one on one tutoring more than actually teaching. I am still a little worried about my adviser coming, but I think I like the structure and what I have planned for that day. I am worried about what they will say.

So here is hoping this week ends well. Time seems to be moving so fast and yet so slow. My unit is almost over and I can't believe it.

My Sixth Day

So today I had them finish the 8 question clicker quiz. I had students who finished put their answers back in the clicker since it does not save the answers from a previous session. Everyone finished the quiz today and I got students on task doing homework right after that. The students who are really squirmy didn't settle down to get anything done, but I caught their antics and made them at least open their book. I had trouble getting not only the squirmy ones to settle, but the advanced students as well. The student that I am worrying about is getting all the material knows all the right answers, but can't show their work or does not turn in the work. Although I got a few more students to get work done. I will have to remind students about it some more tomorrow. I hope to have everyone turn in the homework by Friday. I will have to have students take the test after school for those who missed it or didn't finish it. I know that students who are in math lab can take my test during that period. So I know that helps some of the students. Tomorrow we will work on adding and subtracting decimals, but I think the main focus will be word problems and figuring out which decimal is greater than the other. I know my students have adding and subtracting decimals down, but I hope to challenge them more and build their problem solving skills. This week will be review and word problems. It will be applying everything they know. I hope that this does not make students bored.

My Fifth Day

Today went better. I began to clamp down more and get the class to move things along. However I didn't realize that the class would only get half of the quiz done today. Only one person finished the 8 question quiz and that is the super smart student that has been getting everything. I think they enjoyed working with the clickers to take their quiz, but it was hard to get some students to write down their work. Which is now even more vitally important since they will have to re input their answers on Monday. It was a good day all in all though. I did have some talking problems and some passing of notes. I snatched away the notes though. I will have to move kids on Monday.