Blog 2

Looking back on this past year, I found that it was very easy to be critical of yourself. Especially with high expectations for your class, you immediately become self-critical when you're not seeing results. Because of this fact, I think I'll first talk about one of the learning goals where I thought I was least successful.

One of the biggest learning goals in middle school that seems to be integrated in nearly all M.S. math problems was the objective over adding and subtracting fractions. Now, I've always thought of myself as a pretty good teacher. I normally can assess how a student thinks and then I'll try to relate a task back to his/her interests and teach them the material. This became extremely hard to do with this prompt because I taught it multiple ways. I thought I should show the different methods one can do in order to solve for that objective. This confused my kids so much early on, because I could tell already that the task of adding and subtracting fractions intimidated them. They weren't very motivated, and they often complained about having to learn this task. So really, I think I just pretty much added fuel to the fire by not giving them a clear cut way of solving the problem. Now, some would argue that you need to show multiple ways because some students see things differently; but if I had to do it over again, I would show one standard way that everyone in the class would do. I thought I did a poor job of assessing my students attitudes towards the subject, and therefore just tried to do what I thought a teacher should do. I believe teaching is having the ability to get to know the students, and then to adapt your own teaching style to better compliment their learning needs. I also thought I did a bad job with my own patience. I'm normally a pretty patient person, but their frustration rubbed off on me. I couldn't see why they did not understand this concept. I should've asked for help from another math teacher or coach. Instead, I kind of just got frustrated with them, and kept on trying to force my lesson plans down their throat hoping that they would come around. I don't recommend doing that. My instructional procedures were okay, but I just wish I would've adapted to their learning styles a little better. As far as differential instruction goes, I tried to show a variety of ways to solve the problem. I had handouts, boardword, and a fraction chart that we stuck on the wall. I still believe though that some lessons are better if they are uniform for the entire class.

Now, I did think that I did an exceptional job at teaching multiplying and dividing integers with different signs, and it's even clearer to me now as to why I had success. First off, I took advice from another teacher, and then adopted her strategy into my lesson plan. Plus, I was a lot more confident with what I was working with, and I felt that I had an excellent strategy for teaching the objective. Plus, I think because I taught this towards the end of the year, I knew my students a lot better. I did a much better job of meeting their needs, because I knew what their needs were. It was awesome. My procedures were very clear the entire lesson, and once again, I used a variety of activities. In particular, my integer triangle that I had them make was a huge hit. I even saw them writing it down when it came time for the state test.

So in conclusion, I am a much better teacher when I don't try and force something on my students. I have to continue to make the effort to assess the students' learning styles and make an effort to be patient and work according to how they learn. It really is that simple; I was being sarcastic.