Week 15 Reflection

 It has been a week of reflection. This week I had final projects for all of my classes except 1. I have used everything I learned in all of my classes to be successful. I learned so much in Curriculum. That was emphasized by the review today. I feel much more prepared to be a teacher and feel like I will be successful. I took a lot of credits this term and was afraid it would be overwhelming and difficult. At times it has been but the classes dovetailed nicely. I was able to use ideas from each class to succeed in the others. I have learned so much. I am glad I will have this blog to look back on and remember how much I learned when I feel overwhelmed next term! One more semester and then I will be in a classroom, that is a wonderful thought!

Week 14 reflection

  This week has been crazy busy! It was good to get in a quick review of the different models of instruction before finishing up the unit plan. I even challenged myself to use concept development for a lesson plan for my Methods class. It was a challenge, but I think it will work. I am looking forward to getting all these big projects turned in so I can focus on my one test final. I feel a lot more prepared to teach now than I did at the beginning of the term. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I am getting excited to actually teach next fall.

Week 13 Reflection

 This week we got to try out the Jigsaw instruction method. It was really useful to look for places in the math standards where jigsaw will be a fitting model of instruction. Such as types of graphs, types of functions, types of polynomials, etc. We were taught using the Socratic seminar method of instruction and I am better able to understand it now. I can see ways to use it in math instruction and look forward to trying it out. I am also really grateful that next week is Thanksgiving Break, I sure need it. Though schoolwork will be getting done. 

Week 12 reflection

 This week we learned about 3 new instructional models. My favorite from this week is the Integrative. We taught a statistics lesson with it and it fit perfectly! It was easy to use and lent itself nicely to math. We were taught using the cause and effect method. I think this method would be good when going over graphs, functions and their graphs, end behavior for graphs  and other things like that when changing a single thing such as slope or degree of the function changes the behavior of the graph. I am not sure how well academic controversy would work in a math class. I will really have to make a concerted effort to make that work in Math. 

These last 2 weeks have been extremely helpful and have taught me a great deal about the lesson planning and teaching models. I look forward to one more week of learning and practicing these skills.

Week 11 Reflection

 This week was very helpful! I really like the 5E model of instruction and it was fun to try it out. The hardest part for me was remembering all 5 steps and letting them discover things in their own time. Those are definitely things I need to work on! It was interesting to see the concept development model in action, but I was very lost the entire time. I will have to really work at incorporating that into lessons in such a way that students don't get frustrated and check out of the lesson. It was challenging to think of everything that needed to be included in the lesson plan so I am really glad we are practicing that! 

I look forward to learning more models of instruction in the coming weeks.

Week 9 reflection

 Not much to reflect on this week. Tuesday we talked about including culture in our curriculum and how that helps students to feel more connected to our content. This made me want to take special note of mathematicians that come from a minority background when I take History of Math next semester and make it a point to include them in my classroom and mention them when discussing their contributions.

Thursday we talked about lesson plans. My main take away is to have enough to guide you through the lesson but not so much that you get bogged down in the plan and can't deviate if necessary or if the students inquiry guides you in a different direction that is just as important as what you had planned.

A lesson plan is like the start of the day when being a mom. I always have a plan of what I want to get done, but usually something leads me to doing something not on my list but just as important. More times than not the deviation makes the day better and helps move the original plan forward, just at a different pace than planned.

Week 8 reflection- Differentiation

 This week was all about differentiation. I learned a couple of very important things this week:

1. differentiation can be simple and effective at the same time, 2. differentiation does not have to stand out or be obvious, 3. differentiation should not always look the same, 4. there are a lot of different ways and reasons to differentiate.

In the classes I have observed so far there has been obvious differentiation and no differentiation. I observed a drama class where the teacher gave a great deal of autonomy and leeway on assignments as a general rule and not necessarily to consciously differentiate but just to get students to participate and be creative. The secondary math 1 class I observed had guided notes for everyone each day. The teacher did this to make sure she was accommodating any students that had that in their IEP. Some classes had students that had this and others did not. She found it to be simpler to use them for everyone so that she didn't have to think about who was supposed to get them. 

I feel like I haven't seen a lot of differentiation that was thought out and planned. What I have seen is just what is easy or made sense for the class. I want to be very deliberate with my differentiation. I want to be able to pin point what I did and why I did it. I don't want to take the easy way out. I think this will take some practice to really perfect. I will also have to put a bit more time and effort into it, but I think it will be more beneficial to my students that way.