Teaching Naturally

I recently got a comment in class that utterly flabbergasted me. Forsythe recently had special "music in the hall" days where they would play music over the PA system during passing time. I was getting ready for the class that I was about to teach during passing time and I was in a good mood. There was music playing and mid-winter break was coming up so I was smiling. One of my students (I don't remember who) then said to me, "Mr. Allen that is the first time I have seen you smile." My jaw dropped when I heard that comment.

Upon reflection I realized that I tense up when I teach for a variety of reasons. I am trying to get through a lot of material and trying to check in with everyone to make sure they are getting it. Because of these things I get tense during lessons and am not always myself. I am working on getting my teaching to become more naturally and to be myself while I am teaching. I think that if I am more comfortable and less tense the students will also be more natural, feel less pressure, and learn the material better. If anyone has suggestions about how to be more relaxed or natural in the classroom I welcome them and appreciate them. Thanks.

Reflections on yesterday

For the past week I have been teaching mini lessons to the students in my math support class to prepare them for the next unit they will have in their regular math classes. I came in yesterday thinking I had some great questions lined up and the lesson did go well. However, it did not occur to me that the students might not understand what I meant by the dimensions of a rectangle. We have been looking at a unit on quadratic relationships and we started out by examining the area of rectangles with a fixed perimeter. My mentor teacher chipped in at that point and asked some questions to help me get them to explain and understand what dimensions of a figure are. I forget the exact line of questioning but it was something to the effect of asking for the length and width of a specific rectangle and then explaining that all that was meant by the dimensions of a figure was the length and width. I feel like there are these little things that I miss, like words that students might not understand. Admittedly it can be hard to notice them because the students often won't pipe up and say, "Umm, Mr. Allen I don't know what dimensions means." My mentor teacher told me that it's just something you notice after you have been teaching for a while. I hope I start noticing these things sooner rather than later, because these things can be the difference between being a good teacher and a great teacher. Plus, if the students are struggling with a word or words they will be distracted from understanding the main concepts of the lesson. That's my reflection on yesterday.

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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Homework Grading: Completion vs. Accuracy

I had a discussion with my mentor teacher the other day about how she grades her homework. Most of the homework she only grades for completion, so if you've done all the problems and have the proper type of work shown you get 10 points. From there you lose points if you have problems missing or incomplete. If you really struggle with a problem and just can't figure out how to do it, you can write a question like "How do I use a proportion to solve this problem?" and still get credit for doing the problem. The reason my mentor teacher said she grades this way is because it allows students to feel comfortable making mistakes and it helps put student errors and misunderstandings on the table for discussion. As we talked about in my methods class, sometimes student errors can be a more valuable discussion tool than discussing only the "correct" method. If you only grade for accuracy you force students to be "correct" on every problem and you miss out on key discussion points and the chance to clear up student misconceptions. I think grading for completion can be an extremely useful tool. However, I think that every once in a while you need to grade for accuracy, otherwise the students might get complacent with turning in just incomplete material or material that is worked out wrong. Plus grading for accuracy every now and then helps them be prepared for quizzes and tests. By mixing up the grading styles and not telling the students how they all will be graded it keeps them honest and having to do every problem.

Claymation!!