Berger

First week of lead teaching- 9

This week was my  first week of lead teaching for my math unit. It was a very interesting and telling week in the sense that I was able to see where the students' skills began and progressed throughout the first few days of the unit. We began covering place value, comparing, comparing, adding/ subtracting decimals, converting to and from fractions and learning the correct pronunciation of the decimals in words. One thing that I did in my lesson that I was pleased with and found very helpful was providing a review and quiz in the  middle of the unit to check on their progress and understanding. The day before the review I realized that we had been doing a lot of work in class and the students were responding very well so I decided to give them a treat and make a jeopardy review game before the quiz. Instead of simply going over the topics that we had covered, I made a jeopardy game online using jeopardylabs.com. I had five topics with four questions per topics worth different points. I had the students in groups of 5 and we went around the room so each table took turns choosing their topic and value. I had all of the students answer the question and write their answer on a dry erase board (1 per group) so that everyone could participate and not wait for the 4 tables before them. I switched the question chooser and writer for each turn so that all of the students had a chance. I also made sure to walk around and observe as they were answering the questions to make sure that they were on task and that everyone was participating. They students loved playing and I think it was a great and fun way to review. Most of the students did very well on the quiz and I could tell that I was really excited about their understanding because their papers literally have "good" "great job" "yes!" all over. So far the lead teaching is going very well and I look forward to teaching and learning more next week.

Second week of lead teaching- 10

One of the struggles during the second week of lead teaching was that we introduced science this week which takes up half of the math time. Instead of the usual two hours, we only had one hour on Tuesday and Thursday so I had to compact all of the information in half of the time. This was definitely a tough adjustment but while I planned my lesson I allotted enough time for this to actually work out alright. Another decision that I had to make was whether or not I wanted to extend the unit one more day to give them a review day before the unit test. I ended up just making a review packet for their long weekend so that they could see all of the topics that would be covered on the test. I think that this worked out alright, but based on some of the test scores I know that a review would have been beneficial. A majority of the students got between a C and an A, with some outliers that received scores as low as 7/30. A beneficial tactic that I implemented the second week, after I had an issue with about 6 students consistently not bringing their homework, was having the students stay with me during their recess time and finish their homework worksheet for half credit. I thought that this was a good idea because not only were the students losing points from not bringing in their homework, but they were lacking the extra practice that homework provides. This way the students hopefully take more responsibility so that they don't lose their valued recess time.

Week 11

This week I gave the final test for my decimal unit. I was very happy with the results with the exception of a few questions that were often missed. The questions that were answers incorrectly most often were the ones on ordering decimals and dividing decimals. I was very surprised with the difficulty that they had with the ordering decimals questions because they seemed to really grasp the concept when I had taught it but apparently had not actually internalized the information. The next few days we began working with algebraic and numerical equations. The students really enjoyed these problems and did fairly well throughout the lessons as well. During this unit, Mr. Casimiro taught and I assisted throughout the lessons, checking working, helping if the students had questions, keeping them on task, as well as other duties. We began the unit with evaluating the statements, so either write in numbers and letters (fifty more than seven), or write in words (42+6). We reviewed many terms that could be used in these equations such as difference, more than, take away, etc. After this information was understood, we moved on to actually solving algebraic equations such as 5+x when x is 7. We did not introduce problems where they had to solve for the missing number. The equations did include addition, subtraction, multiplication, division as well as working with decimals and fractions. 

Week after Thanksgiving

Over Thanksgiving weekend, I graded the tests for the algebra unit. Overall, the students in the first class did well on the test and demonstrated knowledge of the topic. However, I was surprised that the second class did not do nearly as well, overall as the first. I spoke with Mr. Casimiro about this and we were surprised because we thought that the second class usually got a better lesson due to the fact that we learn and realize what does not go so well so we can adjust to make a better lesson for the following class. Following Thanksgiving, we began a unit on graphing data. We started with bar graphs and then moved onto evaluating the data using mean, median, mode and range. After that we started the box and whisker plot. To begin the unit, we had the students each choose their own topic, for example, favorite class (math, reading, writing, science), favorite sports team (Bears, Sox, Bulls). We then had the students go around the class and take down everyone's response. They used their tallied information to created a bar graph. The following day, we had the students in groups of 3-7, choose at topic to interview other classes about. We had one group at a time go into the other classrooms (grades 2-5) to take a poll based on their topic. They instructed the class of how the poll had to work, only vote one time, we will list all the topics first and give you a minute to choose. The students really enjoyed this activity because they were able to go into other classrooms and find their own data. They then went back to their seats and individually made a bar graph and evaluated the data. With the exception of a few teachers who started to refuse entry to the students, the lesson went well and they students gained some worthy experience. Thursday I was able to go on a field trip with the 4th and 5th grade students who were in choir. The students were taken to the Chase auditorium by the Chicago Children's Choir because a foundation at Chase bank was what sponsored our school to be part of the choir program. The students were so excited and wore matching shirts and ties. It was a great experience and they sounded fantastic.