Week 9- Teaching Practice

Week 9

In the past week, I had to go through my first end of a grading period which was less than ideal. I had students coming in everyday during every lunch break and after school period to turn in redo assignments for work. One day, I had over twenty students in line to ask about a redo or turn in material to me. Many students were very impatient and got loud. For those loud students, I gave them a warning and said if they continued to talk, then I would kick them out and they would not be able to redo any assignments. As for the impatience of my students I have told all of my classes now in detail that if students continued to monitor their grade regularly and redo every assignment throughout the quarter, then they would not have to wait in a long line to make up assignments at the last minute. 

I highly doubt that my mentioning of this fact will change the minds of the majority of my students, but I thought it was worth a shot to mention it. I also found that my students who come to me regularly for help on either homework or redo assignments were not the people who needed to redo work during the last week. I also told my students that most weeks I have either three or less students at coach class any given day and most days, no students come in for help. I have continued to instill the idea that the homework is important to emphasize the extra practice to learn how to do something and get feedback, but many of students still do not understand that. 

I find the grading policy difficult to teach within because it allows students to be lazy and not do work and their parents then wonder why their student is failing in class because they do not get enough practice of material in the 90 minutes of class, especially if they are off-task as well. This grading policy gives students a 50% for any assignment even if they do not attempt the work. The idea behind this is great, but so far in practice, my standard level students have taken this great mastery learning grading policy and decided to do less work. 

Module 8- Teaching Practice

Module 8

In the past week, I had several informal observations including one by one of my administrators and he gave me good feedback on ways to continue to hone my craft of teaching. He stressed that I find ways to make the material relevant to my students. I did this in my lesson by talking about the cost of colleges and ways that my students could save money will still furthering their education. I continued from this by having my students work through an example about Yellow Stone National Park and the wolf population. This real life example of the struggling wolf population shows how math can be applied in the real world and how I can draw my students interest in mathematics for future careers. 

What inspired me towards mathematics was all of the different ways that mathematics can be used. For instance, economics, healthcare, investments, sports, engineering, and many others. I love that math has so many applications and I am portraying that to my students everyday because I can relate math to whatever interests them in order for them to feel invested and interested. As my students continue to relay their interests to me, I will continue to find new ways to speak to them about math and other subjects that interest them. In addition, I have found that small games can peak students interest. I have started playing Hang man when I am searching for a certain word when describing new material and all of my students get involved, even those who do not know the answer. It has been effective and exciting. 

Module 7- Teaching Practice

Module 7

Last week, I spent a lot of time within my lesson planning with my department chair working to make my lessons more organized for my students in order to prevent opportunities where students can have the chance to talk and get off task. I did this by chunking my lessons in better ways by having my students take notes for approximately 10 minutes and then try some example problems for 5 minutes, followed by more notes and practice problems, which then lead into a slightly longer activity with a discussion of sequences. I found this to be successful and my students liked it because the note taking was broken up into smaller parts. By doing this, my students were able to get more active work within groups as well as more discussion time in class which is my goal. I want my students to be exploring mathematics on their own for the most part rather than me simply teaching them how to do it. I want students to create these connections between the material and their prior knowledge. 

Additionally, I found that my algebra 2 students prefer working in groups to learn rather than in competitive settings individually. I found this to be interesting because many times individuals like competition, but my class was more interested in working in groups competitively, so I have decided to make the majority of practice work as competitive group work. My algebra 2 students also have struggled to make connections between parabolas and quadratic functions. We had an activity where students would plot points on their calculator where the radius of a paper circle was measured and then the weight of the circle was measured, and then the values were put into a table. The radius was the x-value and the weight was the y-value and this relationship is quadratic in nature. The overarching question for my students was, "if the radius of a disk is double, does the weight double as well? " Many of my students initially told me that yes, it must, but then found out they were wrong. I showed my students the relationship in a slightly different way by showing them the formula for the area of a circle, A=Pi(r^2) showing that if the radius is doubled, the area would change by a factor of 4/. 

In this last week, I spent a lot of time with classroom management and am planning to change the seating chart on Monday from pairs of desks in rows in the classroom to groups of 4 in the effort to get students talking in their groups rather than across the room. Moreover, I implemented a new behavior system where students get three strikes for talking or bad behavior and 3 strikes equates to a phone call home and the second time I have to do this it will be a referral. My students are starting to become more comfortable in the classroom and starting to ignore the classroom expectations. 

Module 6- Teaching Practice

Module 6

In this last week, my students were even more loud and excited because this week was homecoming week and spirit week at school so each day my students were dressed up. This was nice because I was able to connect with my students because I dressed up as well. This allowed my students to see me in a more personal way and connect with me as well. In most of classes, I am working to find my personality in the classroom with my students. Because I am so young, we listen to the same kind of music for the most part, so I find ways to include lyrics from songs when possible and add some fun to the classroom.

While I am doing this in the classroom, I am still trying to remain professional. The balance between fun and professional is difficult and I am airing on the side of caution by trying to stay professional, so I may seem boring to my students at times. I am working to create the environment in my classroom where I can be more fun and involved with my students as I show them my love for math. Lately, I have worked to build relationships with my students to understand their interests in order to make the material more fun to them. I have worked on this through questioning my students who are off task to find what they like, talk about it with them, tell them what I like, connect, and then finally work them through the problem. This process is difficult because I only have to do this in my two large classes where several students are off task regular or refuse to learn.

Teaching my students is difficult enough already, but working to get students who see no value in education and students who do not want to get involved is much harder. This is what I am currently struggling with. As a teacher, I have taken a vow to reach and teach all of my students even if my students do not want to learn. It is hardest to reach these students, but it is also the most rewarding when one of those students does demonstrate understanding and learning.

Module 5- Teaching Practice

Module 5

In this week, I had an observation done by my Stevenson Mentor, MaryCarol. She provided me with detailed feedback for my lesson for my Algebra 2 class on discovery of Hyperbolas.My feedback included tightening up lesson plan activities to hold students accountable for activities. This is something that I know I need to include and plan to implement next week and going forward. Furthermore, MaryCarol recommended observing other veteran teacher in the department as they teach to learn from them because of my situation as a teacher to find new and better ways to handle questioning techniques. In addition, it was recommended that an exit ticket be given to assess student understanding of the material for the day. I did not include one originally because this lesson is a two day lesson with the second day having a poster presentation and each group member has to understand the material in order to complete the poster. Another recommendation for the classroom was a different seating chart that would be more supportive of collaboration. My online concern for this is my Algebra 1 students are too loud and I am concerned of having four students at a table together. So this change will be considered going forward. 

In the last week, my students did a better job of meeting classroom expectations and many students since interim grades came out, are realizing that they need to complete their homework so I had to print out extra copies of the original homework assignments. Now, the parents are invested in the students' grades because they saw poor grades. I am hoping that poor grades will lead to parents getting involved by forcing their children to complete their homework even though it is not graded. I have stressed the importance of homework and practice in relation to doing well on exit tickets and quizzes, but some students do not want to believe that they need to complete the work because they have a good grade so far. They, however, ignore that they material we have covered is mostly review so far. 

Going forward, I expect my successful students who do not complete their homework to face challenges because they may struggle with future materials. I am trying to instill a desire to complete homework regularly because the extra practice will result in total understand of concepts from class. I want my students to responsible for their own education and see me or ask questions when they do not understand.