Teaching Day 2

I was able to see some really great teaching today. On individual stuggled a little with his lesson because the students where not advanced enough to do the presented task. He was able to modify the task to draw the students in and begin to push them up. Unfortunately, the task was a little long and he did not have enough time to really draw out the concept that he was wanting the students to learn. He did a very good job at trying to probe the students and get them thinking critically. The second teacher was able to get right in with the students and relate with them. He talked a lot in their terms (slang) and had a laid back demeanor. He was not a push over, though. He was able to challenge the students and forced them to think critically about their answer. The students were required to prove/justify their responses.

The students even commented that they liked the way they were being taught. The liked working in groups and being challenged. So, I hope I can get my students to buy into it this fall.

The Big Day...

So I had a chance to try out my new teaching style...and it went very well. I had five students, 3 boys and 2 girls. The students were quiet and did not work together initially. This is the one thing that I really did not anticipate and prepare for. I assumed that the students knew how to work in groups and would just jump right in. I had to continually encourage them to talk to each other and look to each other, not me, for help. My lesson related to finding the cost of a cell phone bill if the company charged by the minute. The students were interested and immediately began working on the problem. It took a little too much time to do all the computations, in hindsight calculators would have been beneficial. This put more of the focus on the computations instead of the concepts. We where able to put the equation in words and then with variables. In addition, I felt rushed in the after stage. I was not able to really probe the students and draw out big ideas. Knowing your students is definitely beneficial. It allows you to make modifications that will help to draw out the big ideas and not cause the task to become blogged down with mole hill issues.

Time to Put it to the Test...

Tomorrow I am going to walk before 10 sixth graders and a group of my peers and put this constructivist teaching to the test. Am I nervous? Yes and no. Yes, more because my peers are going to be there analyzing everything I do or don't do. And no, because I generally feel at home in the classroom. I really want to put this into practice in the classroom and this is a good opportunity for me to practice. It will give me an opportunity to see what I am going to be good at and what components I am going to have to work on. I really think that I am going to have to work on questioning and not taking charge and doing the math. It is going to be hard for me to let the students struggle and develop this on their own. I feel really confident that the lesson is relevant and one that my students will be able to grasp without having to do a lot of prompting, but not so easy that it is not cognitively demanding. We'll see.

The Future...

I really buy into the whole student-centered concept, but there is one thing that is troubling me. What happens to students the next year? What I mean is, when they spend a whole year in my classroom constructing their knowledge through student-centered task, and then the next year they are placed in a room where the teacher doesn’t use this, what happens? This is not going to stop me from accepting the challenge, but I have wondered that. What if the teacher doesn’t allow the students to use their methods to solve problems and counts off on tests because they don’t solve the problems the teacher’s way? Also, if I push beyond the curriculum, is that teacher going to refuse to push further and only do what the standard says, causing students to repeat the same curriculum and become bored? Does this really work when only a handful of teachers are on board?

Relevance

My response to relevance of middle school mathematics task is a yes and no. In middle school it is good to use task that relate the students’ interest, as it will help to engage them. It also needs to be relevant to things that know about, or background knowledge needs to be given. For example, students in Atlanta probably have no concept of what a yacht is and a problem using a yacht would not make sense to them (particularly without a diagram). At the same time students should not be catered to, or they will only be willing to be involved in tasks that are relevant to them. Talking about a yacht would not be relevant, but it would expand their knowledge base. When these students take a job, the task they are assigned will probably not always be relevant to their interest, but they will be relevant to the job they were hired to do.

Creating Lesson Plans

Creating the first lesson plan was a challenge for me. I wanted to do a lesson plan on integers. My students struggled to remember the "rules" for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing integers. It is so critical to all future math courses, because from the time we talk about them until forever, they will encounter positives and negatives. I wanted it to be tight (not as in cool) and very focused. I was constantly refining and refining the task. In fact I totally changed the task for the refined lesson plan. I struggled to know when to introduce terms and explanations and when to let the students discover. In the end, I feel like I developed a plan that would be student centered and relevant to the students.

Letting Go...

As teachers, we like control and order. Constructivist ideas contradict everything we love about control and order. But I am so ready to implement these ideas, that I almost wish school started next week (again I say almost - I'm not ready to go back to work just yet) . I can envision this going on in a classroom and I am excited by what I see. I think the thing to remember with letting go is that the students don't just walk in the classroom and have a task on the board and start working with no instruction. The purpose of the pre-task is to get the students prepared for the task. This includes getting them thinking mathematically, thinking about the current topic, assessing what they already know, making sure they have the tools/knowledge base to begin the task. But letting go also means that the teacher uses questions and student response to make it happen - not doing a problem and the students mimicking the teacher on the independent problem. The teacher should not release the students to begin the task if the students are not ready. This will cause more confusion and chaos and lead to unnecessary frustration.

What we really need to let go of is the idea that students can't come up with a solution without first being told how to do the problem. If we will let go of this idea, I believe the rest will come a lot easier. We will be willing to let students take control of their learning.