Transformative Moment

My transformative moment (or day) come during week 3 of my long practicum. On Monday I introduced my Fairytale unit. I was very excited about this, because well, it's Fairytales! I started off by going over a sheet labeled "What is a Fairytale". The students were engaged as we read over the point together. I then introduced a sheet that the students would fill out labeled "Let's Make Magic". It had room for them to write the name of the Fairytale we would read and then check off if it had different components such as: once upon a time, magic, and happily every after. I encouraged the students to think about these things as I read the first story, "The Frog Prince". After reading the story the students got their binders and went to their tables. I handed out all the new papers for their Fairytale section. Together we went over the check list and filled it out based on our book. Next I had them do a a story sequencing activity on the book. They received a piece of paper with 8 pictures on it. They had to cut up the pictures and put them in order as they went in the story. They did this successfully, everyone was on task and engaged in the activity.

The following day I did a Math lesson on addition. From the very beginning I struggled. I handed out counters to the students as manipulatives to use. They could not keep their hands off them. I did a few problems on the board but quickly realized that my magnetic counters were too big for my paper so I could not demonstrate as well as I had hoped. We then moved to drawing shapes in the circles where the tokens had been. 4 in one circle, 5 in the second circle and 9 in the big circle, then bring them together. This is where I started to lose the students. I wanted to get their input but they ended up picking numbers too big to use. Some of them had no idea where they were supposed to be drawing and others just didn't understand the concept at all. When I set them free to create their own problems and solutions it was clear that most of them were lost. With the wide range of abilities in my class some whizzed through the page and others still didn't know where to start.

What I learned from this were a couple of things. First, my comfort level with a subject makes a big difference. Going into my Fairytale lesson I was excited and confident. Going into my Math lesson I was nervous and under prepared. The range in levels in my class made Math much more difficult to teach for me. I realized that I needed a better grasp of the material myself before I could teach it and I need to break the lesson up and do some more difficult questions for my more advanced students. I also need to do more examples. This was the beginning of my practice and I was not as comfortable using wait time and spending most of my time on front loading. It was a hard lesson to learn and was quite frustrating but I also took a lot away from it. I know I still have growing to do when it comes to teaching Math but I grateful for where the journey has brought me so far.