June 27 2010

So we are coming to the end of the road here...I can't believe it's almost over already! I really enjoyed this class! It was much more then I expected and taught me more then I realized. That final sure is a stinker though...I will be working on it again all day tomorrow

June 22 2010

I can't believe I got an A on all 5 quizes! It toally blows my mind! I guess I am really understaing things to do with math! This is super exciting, it gives me the strength to realize that I will be able to help my students and not have them suffer through math like I did. Thank you Dr. Shih, I think I might be alright...

June 20, 2010

So tomorrow I am going back to my original mentor teachers class for the last two weeks of practicum 2. It is exciting but challenging at the same time. Most of the students are low level learners and some of them cannot even do basic addition and subtraction. It is hard when they are so far behind not to enforce the "rules" on them so they can just do drill and practice in hopes that it will help them catch up to their grade level. In that class though the use their whiteboards to help them do math problems so I find it easier to be able to ask them how they did it and find out more about what's going on in their heads.

June 16 2010

Today I am taking the quizzes that I am scared of. I studied and feel that I know what is going on but I guess we will see. I have always been terrified of math tests and it seems that the fear has yet to subside. I can see how students dread math tests but I haven't seen them take any but the accelerated math test and they pretty much think they are a joke. Those darn kids.... But I got some sick tan lines from the Bare pool

June 14 2010

I am starting to think that I am not understanding these math concepts as well as I thought. I thought I was understanding the addition and subtraction grid pretty well, until I got my quiz back and received a 3 out of 5. And this multiplication one is throwing me for a loop. I keep confusing partitive with measurement and so I now know that if it I think it is partitive it is probably measurement. Which is not a good place to be. I get the main idea of them but am having trouble applying knowledge to the word problems. This is something I will have to study more of.

June 9 2010

I really enjoy watching those videos of children doing math! It helps really drive home the point of the grid framework and cgi. I think that when I become a teacher I will always strongly enforce having the students do math their way and telling me how they did it. And I know I won't always tell students to show work because they might be using recall and can't show it. I really enjoy this class and honestly seeing the other one noonday, glad that you Dr Shih came to teach us!

June 6 2010

Last week I taught math all week in my practicum and it was quite exhausting. It wasn't the fact that the concepts were hard to teach, solids and symmetry, but that when students didn't understand I had to think of different ways to explain it to them. Math concepts are hard to teach because it is hard to measure where a student is at when it comes to how they are in taking the information. It will be so much easier when I have my own classroom and can see where my students are using cgi. Sometimes when I am teaching math I feel like I just go around in circles; I hope this is something that will go away as I get more experience.
I believe I am ready for the quiz tomorrow. I am really enjoying this class, it is helping me realize that I can help students instead of frustrating them even more.