FEAG

After looking through the FEAG:

Some spots where I feel I am performing above a two might be:

Planning and Prep 1- I feel as though I have created some great lesson plans that are meant to help students develop meaningful understanding of the content being taught. I have created an activity about an egg launch that will help students determine what the vertex, intercepts, and shape of a quadratic function represent in the context of the problem.

Classroom Social Context and Environment 4- I have made great strides in using group work in my lessons. I have used many different types of grouping methods and feel the students are enjoying the group work I am providing. In the beginning students did not seem to enjoy working in groups because they were not talking with each other, but now when told to work in groups students begin talking right away.

Reflection and Professionalism 3- I am always trying to help out in the classroom. I work really hard to help my teacher stay on top of all the administrative tasks during the lesson. I usually make sure to volunteer to pass back any student work that has been graded.

Some spots where I feel I am performing below a 2 might be:

Content and Instruction 6- I have been struggling with time management during my lessons and usually feel pressed for time at the end of lessons. I would like to work on this because I think it is very important to have enough time at the end of a lesson to properly provide closure.

Classroom Social Context and Environment 1- I think I should have done a better job during the first four days building rapport with students. I was never formally introduced to the class and I should have been assertive enough to introduce myself to the classes. However, students do seem to be comfortable asking me questions about math.

Some spots where I feel I am performing at a 2 might be:

Assessment and Evaluation 2- I work really hard to perform pre-assessments, post-assessments, and informal assessments during my lessons. Sometimes I do not have enough time to informally evaluate each student, but I feel I am performing adequately right now.

1)During this past week I observed another teacher and was watching how she dealt with discipline in the classroom. The particular class that I observed was large and during the long lunch period. There were many students who had difficulty focusing and staying on task and other students who must forget materials quite often. There were 3 different teachers in the classroom and 2 of them dealt with discipline. The same student was doing some things that were distracting to other students. One of the teachers dealt with the student by getting on his level and talking quietly to the student. The other teacher tried to talk with the student, but ended up moving the student to a separate desk on the side of the room. I think both options were effective, but by moving the student he was able to focus more and was much less distracting to the rest of the class.

2) So far I have not heard about how teachers deal with cheating in their classroom. I have not seen any cheating on homework occur, rather students just don't do their homework assignments. I think in my own classroom I would allow students to work together on homework, but both students must be contributing. If I see cheating I will definitely address it, but I would want to talk to both students separately. I would want to talk to both students about what they were doing and why it was wrong.

3)My high was that I taught my first lessons this week. I thought the lessons went well overall and really enjoyed teaching. This made me excited about the rest of the year. My low during my week was when my students did not respond right away during the group work time of my lesson. I started to panic, but just kept going. In the end it turned out fine and I think the students will work well together in the future.

Autumn Goals

I have 2 goals for this quarter:

1. Teach lessons in which students are engaged with one another and are learning dring the lesson.

2. Teach lessons with confidence

I chose the first goal because I want to impact the students I teach as much as possible. I know that my lessons will be falling in between my mentors lessons and I don't want the lessons to seem as an interruption in the curriculum. Instead I want students to get a lot out of my lessons and hope to interject as seamlessly as possible.

The second goal is personal. In the past I have been nervous teaching in front of mentors or someone who is evaluating my teaching. Usually when I teach to students without being evaluated I don't feel nervous at all. However, I really want feedback from you and my mentor in order to become the best teacher I can be. Therefore my goal is to be less and less nervous when teaching in front of other experienced teachers.

Technology in Math Education: Tapping into Visions of the Future

This article did an excellent job of describing how technology could be used in future classrooms. I liked how the article discussed so many different ways technology could be used in the classroom. However, I had a hard time following some of the uses of technology because I have not heard of some of the programs and software. Are schools actually using programs like CAS and the Algebra Tutor? I wish the article would have better described the technology and how it has been used in classrooms. If this would have been done, I would have been more convinced to try the programs they mentioned in the article.

I liked how the article discussed the issue of web-based learning. In the last few years it seems as though so many more college courses have online components than in the past. I think web-based learning is an excellent use of technology for some subjects, but I think it would be difficult to teach math completely online. I would have a lot of trouble understanding how to write mathematical expressions symbolically without an instructors direct instruction. I also would find it difficult to learn procedures used in mathematics without being able to watch a few examples from the teacher.

Technology Grant

http://www.adoptaclassroom.org/index.aspx

This site allows teachers to register their classroom. Then donors look for classrooms they would like to help financially. The donors then develop relationships with their adopted classrooms. Teachers are allowed to use the money donors provide however they would like to in their classrooms.

The Reality of Using Technology in the Classroom

I was disappointed that this article was so outdated. I feel that a more current article would have been a great resource for our cohort. However, some of the sites the article mentioned are still active and were interesting to look at. For example, the Leonardo da Vinci activity seemed like an excellent activity to use in a math classroom. It used spreadsheets in the lesson to deal with the data component, and I thought this was a unique way of integrating technology and math. The lesson also covers science and history topics as well and could easily be carried out in a classroom with a lot of technology resources and one without such resources. I also liked the “Create a Graph” interactive tool. I thought this tool would be useful to students who are learning to make graphs based on data. This website would be an excellent way of showing students the differences between bar graphs, line graphs, pie graphs, etc. It provides a visual comparison of why some graphs are better to represent sets of data than others.
The article mentions quite a few sites that require a subscription. Are schools willing to pay for the subscription to these websites? I feel like schools that have such limited funding for technology components would not be willing to spend extra money on subscriptions to a math website. Even though schools might not want to pay the money for these sites, I feel that there are ample free sources teachers have access to today.
This article also makes me wonder what resources current schools offer. Do a majority of classrooms have computers? If not, how are current teachers working with technology in their classrooms? I would have liked to read an article that addresses the current use of technology in math classrooms.

Virtual Manipulatives

This article discussed the use of virtual manipulatives in mathematics classrooms. I have never heard with or used such virtual manipulatives before in either my schooling or my teacher preparation classes. I think the idea of virtual manipulatives is great and I think the majority of students would really enjoy working with such things. Today's students are going to enjoy working with virtual manipulatives because they enjoy working with computers and tend to always be using some form of computer based visual. If given a choice of using a computer or using a sheet of paper to perform the same task, I feel most students will choose to use the computer.

The virtual Cuisinaire rods applet used methods that showed students the movement of ten ones blocks to one tens blocks through animation. This animation might be instrumental in helping students to visualize what is happening when grouping. Many students need this type of visual stimulation when trying to learn a new concept. Many students have difficulty learning when all they are given is a verbal description. However, the physical manipulatives also provide this visualization. I wonder if students who need to learn by hands-on experiences would benefit more from the actual Cuisinaire rods than from the virtual manipulative.

A Literature Review of Science and Mathematics Integration

The article “A Literature Review of Science and Mathematics Integration” focused on the possible benefits of integrating science and mathematics content areas. Even though integration has not been shown to be more effective than traditional teaching methods the article provides numerous examples of how using integration can be beneficial to student learning.

The article states an advantage to using integration in the classroom is that integration allows students to interact with each other. Integration encourages “discussion, investigation, product development, drama, and telecommunication.” I feel all students would enjoy learning more if they were able to frequently use one or more of these interactions frequently in the classroom. As a student, I would have enjoyed high school math more if I had been allowed to talk with other students about my ideas or questions concerning math concepts. Instead of working on mindless drill problems, I feel I would have learned concepts, such as perimeter and area, better had I been given the opportunity to work on a complex problem. I also understand how some students might not benefit from so many interactions with other students. However, it might help them if they were given a complex problem, such as the “Bouncing Ball”, to work on by his or herself.

This article also mentions that integration should only be used in order to better enhance the concepts of two subjects. It was mentioned that many teachers tend to integrate subjects for the sake of integrating. For example, in a local school district the administration mandated that mathematics teachers integrate an English/writing assignment into their curriculum. Some teachers embraced the idea, by having the students compile a document describing their thought process in a math problem. However, other teachers chose to have students write a paper on a mathematician. The second idea did not correspond to the curriculum that they were already using. Instead it added math history to their classroom. Even though math history is important, many of the students probably did not learn anything new about mathematics. In contrast, having students write about their thought process probably helped some students to better understand the concept on which they were working. I feel that having students reflect about what they are doing in math class and write it down is a much better use of integration than assigning a math biography paper.