Reflection 11/8

This week was a great week. I started off the week with my GLT in math. Monday and Tuesday were both trying days and I just did not feel as comfortable as I have in the past. When I thought about it I realized that it was probably because I have never taught a whole lesson in Math class and that it was not my home base room so I felt sort of disconnected. To fix this I brainstormed some ways to make myself feel part of the class and the room, and I decided to try a community meeting. Since the class I had for math just had a community meeting in L.A we wished each other a "happy learning day" instead of a good morning. We also played a game that led into my lesson. I felt more connected with the class, and with teaching math. It gave me a great intro too and I feel like it was better than just jumping into math, especially after they just had language arts. I had a blast the entire class period and the kids played a great role in discussion and problem solving. Their ideas and ways to solve multiplication problems floored me. I really realized how smart they are! I continued on Thursday with community meeting and it was GREAT! We played telephone with the statement "Today we are going to draw our math". I then gave them a cross curricular project that had them doing math, writing, and drawing. The creativity was amazing and I am so amazed by how great every one of the drawings are. I could also tell who was getting clusters and who wasn't.

Next week I am going to work more on discussion and writing in math. Some of my students are really good at math, but hate to write so I am hoping that maybe writing about math will be something they could accomplish to better their writing skills and get them to write more. We are also going to be doing some group work that I think is going to be fun and really set these lessons in. I will be working on getting them to do a little more paper work than they did this week, and I think this will help all of them begin to reach mastery of the topics. It will also get them to settle down and do some individual work. This will also help me assess where they are more than just by volunteering and student response because I will be able to assess all the students.