Working with students

I got to experience something unique in my placement on Tuesday. My mentor teacher offered retakes on an inequality quiz that students took a week or two ago because a lot of people struggled mightily with it. One of the students who was taking the retake had hurt her writing hand, so what we did was have her dictate her answers to me while I wrote down exactly what she said. At times it was hard not to say anything, but I noticed that sometimes you can be leading even when you don't say anything. There were a few times I didn't catch something she said so I paused my writing as an indication to repeat herself (I wasn't sure I even wanted to ask her to say something again, though I eventually got over that - it seems kind of silly that I ever thought that). However sometimes a pause can mean more than just repeat yourself. Sometimes when teachers pause, whether it be in writing or saying something, they are looking for a student to say more and complete their answer because the student is missing something. I think that happened once while I was writing her test for her when I did not mean it to. Also there were times when I just did not understand what she wanted me to do. It helped that I knew the topic of the test and that I had seen the students solve these types of problems before, otherwise I would have had an even harder time of it. I guess the moral of the story here is that you can be accomodating for students, just be careful that you establish a procedure for it and that you know how they are going to think about solving the problem so that you understand what they are asking you to do or write down.

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