week 3 reflection

On Thursday of this last week I substitued for my CT. I had my first instance (of this semester) of being extremely frustrated while teaching. The math lesson was introducing rulers. The kids were supposed to practice drawing lines with rulers, then use the rulers to make a star on a worksheet. Half of the students simply did not understand what I was showing them. They would draw lines without the rulers or put the ruler on the paper and draw without their pencil against the edge of the ruler. I think that I did not explain to them well enough how to do this. Using a ruler is something that most adults don't think about so I don't think I explained it step-by-step. I just assumed that it was something that would come naturally. The next day my CT retaught the lesson and I saw the differences in the way she showed the kids how to use the ruler and the way I showed them. She was much more specific in her directions. Next time I have to introduce a new tool to the kids I'm going to write down step-by-step what you do beforehand and try to think about how it would be if you'd never used the tool before.

That same day I think I applied some important philosophies that I had been taught. That morning all the kids came to school talking about the hurricane. It was quite obvious that all the kids were thinking about it. At the beginning of calendar time I took about 10 minutes and we talked about hurricanes. I think it kept us from having a lot of interruptions throughout the day about it. Later that afternoon I was reading a book to the kids and they simply could not focus. I was getting frustrated and was feeling like I wanted to give the entire class a write-up. Instead, I put the book down and told the kids that they had two minutes to talk. I explained to them that the class seemed to be having trouble focusing and not talking, so I was going to give them two minutes to stay at their spot on the carpet and talk so they could get it out of their system. After that we would re-focus and try again. I've had professors teach that these are good things to do and I know that they are, this is just the first time I have actually put it into practice and it seemed to be a worthwhile use of time.