Noticing Blogs: Weeks 12 & 13

Week 12 Noticing Blog

         Due to Thanksgiving, this week was a short week; however, this was one in which my mentor teacher and I talked about how to inform our students on what Thanksgiving is all about. After being repeatedly asked what Thanksgiving is, my mentor teacher and I wondered how we could go about telling our third grade students about this traditional American holiday (in a classroom full of students from Mexico, Bolivia, Columbia, etc.). After planning literacy and math related tasks for our students, at the end of the week, we feel as though they finally began to understand what the meaning of the holiday is. Not only did we talk about and research the real meaning of Thanksgiving and the story behind it, but my mentor teacher and I incorporated this into literacy, mathematics, writing and science. Reflecting on this experience, I wish we would have been able to incorporate not only American holidays and traditions, but the traditions of my students that they celebrate in their culture. This would make the school culture much more meaningful and not only academically enriching, but the students are gaining different cultural perspectives they are unaware of.

Week 13 Noticing Blog

         Today, I started our new unit in math on area. I was nervous to begin teaching this because our students experienced difficulties when multiplying. I introduced this lesson using centimeter grid paper, where the students were asked to solve an open-ended problem to find the area of a new playground I was making. Not only were my students interested in the problem I introduced this new unit with, they were engaged because it was something that was meaningful and related to their every day life at school. At the end of the lesson, I had my students asking me to give them another word problem, which is something I never thought I would experience. My students actually liked word problems and preferred them over simple numerical problems. I explained to my students that when they take the time to read the problem, it feels rewarding to conquer a challenging word problem they thought looked so hard at first. In my daily lessons, I would like to incorporate many lesson-openers with word problems to get my students engaged and thinking about the underlying mathematical concept and the many different strategies to solve it.