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.

Week 7 Reflection

 This week we talked about standard based grading and no grade classrooms. I am a big fan of standard based grading. I follow a couple of Tik Tok creators that do standard based grading. I know that I will need to take the time to write the standards in student friendly language. I really prefer standard based grading for math. I think it will help students know what they need to work on and not have to guess at what things they need to work on.  I often got/get tests back and wonder where I went wrong and if it was the same thing on every problem, it would have been very helpful to know exactly what I needed to work on to get a better score. It will also help encourage students to keep working toward mastery if they know what to work on to improve their grade. I also feel that it will help them to enjoy math a little more. It is easier to like a subject when you feel like you can get better at it and do well, I feel that standard-based grading lends itself to this and will be better for the students and also help me to differentiate teaching based on what students need to work on. I am excited to utilize standard-based grading in my classroom.

Week 6 Reflection

 On Tuesday we talked about diversity in our classrooms. My main take away from this discussion is how important it is that we get to know our students and their situations. We can't let our own implicit bias affect how we treat students. Without a true relationship with our students we will not be able to help them succeed. 

On Thursday we talked about formative assessments. I really like how varied and informal formative assessments are. I hope to use many different formative assessment types in my classroom. I feel that varying those assessments will keep my students from getting bored. When a teacher used a single type of formative assessment, such as worksheets, students become apathetic about completing them and come to dislike them. As teachers we need to make sure we don't get stuck in a rut and fall into using only traditional assessments. Doing this puts different students at a disadvantage, such as EL learners, students with learning disabilities, etc. I think it is important to remember that formative and summative assessments can be fun and creative.