Lesson Planning --> Classroom

Being back in the classroom is weird! We have spent half of this week’s class time teaching the lessons that we have been working hard to prepare. So far, I have found myself in the midst of elementary school math classrooms as well as a higher level PE class. It feels strange to be sitting in a desk as a student again. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been attending all of the classes that I am currently registered for. However, I look at these classes as direct preparation for my future career(s). It has been a while since I have learned how to round or perform a line dance.

From having the experience of “being a third grader” learning how to round to the tens place on Monday, teaching Math I felt even stranger. With an elementary school class, most of the things we learn at that left are committed to memory. We have to use those fundamental concepts in every class that follows which allows for practice and internalization. With high school classes, it is so easy to retain the information for a test and then forget it because we are not asked to apply what we’ve learned once we leave that classroom. Once students fulfill their minimum credits, they may not have to take certain subjects ever again. This is especially common for math classes as they are stereotyped for boring and irrelevant. For this reason, high school math teachers face an exceptionally daunting task when making their lessons both enjoyable and memorable.

I discovered this on a whole new level as I taught my function transformation earlier this afternoon. When I handed out my first activity to link to prior knowledge, I realized that some students did not have enough background to do what was expected to be already known at this point in the semester. While I had tried to simplify it done as much as possible by cutting out over 2/3 of my selected NCSCOS standard, I realized that not all of my students were actually ready to be learning what I was about to teach. This hit me pretty hard as I realized how much impact a teacher can or cannot have on their students. Some of my students may have not had a math class since their sophomore or junior year of high school. This is three or four years that they have had to forget their loosely taught understanding of some of the concepts from their classes. How can I as a future teacher make sure that this time gap does not phase their understanding of the lessons taught in my class? How can I make my students more passionate about math so that they will want to internalize what I teach?

These two questions are commonly asked by teachers of all age groups and all content areas. Many have attempted to answer them, but I do not believe there is a cookie cutter answer that will solve it all. The needs of each student are different from their peers and must be treated as so. Teachers must use a mixture of enthusiasm for their content, real life applications and tying in student interests to develop their lessons so students will also find them important and be able to comprehend them. In math, it is so easy to get caught up in the formulas and miss how it is useful in the world around us. My goal is to appeal strongly to my students’ interests by using specific examples that involve them. This will let my students know I am not only concerned with their academic well-being but their personal well-being as well.

When the Going Gets Tougher, I WILL Be Ready!

If Education 250 hasn’t taught me anything else, it has taught me that nothing about the teaching profession is easy. As I continue to battle my plethora of homework, I am constantly reminded of how I only think this is hard. I am currently prone to complaining about how I am doing all I can and still not getting decent sleep. Looking forward makes me realize that I, quite frankly, need to get used to it. While this semester is taxing and all of these projects are stressful, actually being in the field is so much harder.

Teachers are not just teachers. They wear many hats that require them to be, among other things, disciplinaries and caretakers. This has been a large part of my class’s conversations this week as we have discussed effective lesson planning, classroom climate and diversity. Once one becomes a teacher, he or she is no longer solely focused on planning the information that must be covered the next day. They must now consider the different needs and learning styles of each student and shape the lesson to best compliment everyone. Teachers must be sensitive to the social situations that occur inside and outside of their classroom so that they can provide a classroom environment that promotes comfortability, acceptance and growth.

Recognizing students’ needs and finding ways to meet them are mandated directly by NCTCS Standards 2 and 4. Not only are these things we should want to do but they are guidelines that we, as educators, are required to meet. As I look forward to my desired special education classroom, these two components will be crucial to my building of a cohesive classroom environment. I will have to be prepared for all kinds of diversity. This fact is nothing new to me. From my experiences with volunteering in these classrooms in the past, I have seen not only the varying mental/emotional capabilities but have found many differences in home life, social status, attitude and background as well. This classroom, more so than my standard math classrooms, will be an extremely difficult challenge in balancing diversity and understanding. As I realize how prepared I will need to be, I am refreshed by the fact that Education 250 is helping me grow so that I will be ready!

Preparedness is Key

              With the quick passing of fall break, I have come to fully recognize how ridiculously difficult my schedule is. I feel as if I come to this blog each Wednesday wanting to complain about how much harder that particular week has been than the last. Each week has provided its fair share of late nights in the library, coffee reliance and growing to-do lists. I went into the break with the mindset that regardless of how long that list had gotten, I was going to get at least seven hours of sleep each night. While that goal was met with flying colors, I spent the majority of my waking hours doing assigned readings, math problems and stressing over all that I wouldn’t be able to start until I got back to school today. I wish I could say that this stress could be reduced by prioritizing and working ahead. Sadly, being a student athlete and a double major, I am doing all that I can to finish the work load on time.

              Today’s class began with discussion on the importance of our blog posts and maintaining them in a timely fashion. On the board was the entire class’s blog tracker with spots highlighted from where something was incomplete or missing. At this point, I realized that although I had completed last week’s blog a few hours before the deadline, I had forgotten to attach the link to the tracker. While not adding the link is not as big of a deal as not doing it altogether, seeing the yellow block in my section of the spreadsheet sent me into panic mode. By this point, I had also already worried myself to death over my “four” year plan and many probability theory assignments. This incident sent me over the edge as I lost sight of the bigger picture and went into a small downward spiral.

              However, this led into a much greater conversation about how we as teachers must always be on top of our game. Our principals and supervisors are going to expect lots from us. Although they may be empathetic, excuses of how tough our life currently is aren’t going to cut it. Even after long, hard weeks, we will be expected to continue our high performance at all times and respond appropriately. This preparedness also crosses over into the classroom and how we must perform in front of our students.

We spent the majority of the class period talking about how to be well rounded in our lesson planning. While we are already familiar with the form of the 6-point lesson plan and have been working to apply it to our content areas, today’s discussion focused on the importance of assessment within the plan. The class quickly identified that diagnostic testing should be done first, formative assessment within the lesson and summative assessment at the end. Dr. Parker and Dr. Clark introduced the idea that lesson planning should not be completed from top to bottom, straight through the six steps. Instead, planning assessment locations should be done prior to structuring the last five points.

When I first heard this, it threw me completely through a loop. As I initially wrote my lesson on function transformations, I attacked it head on with the mindset that I needed to do it straight through. For this reason, I found myself struggling to find different ways to assess what the students were learning without drilling them with the same kinds of problems over and over. Keeping Dr. Clark and Dr. Parker’s method in mind, I can now see how planning what they must know for their summative assessment and breaking that down into different sections for formative assessment would have aided my overall planning process. If you plan spots for assessment of the different parts of a concept, it will make it much easier to prepare where the teacher needs to do some prompting as well as what method of assessment would best fit the content. Having the end result in mind is highly influential to preparing the right questions to ask when you are in front of the class.

As Stephanie reflected on today’s activity, being in front of a classroom can lead to feeling as if the students are in charge of the teacher rather than vice versa. Especially in the high school setting, this can be extremely dangerous. If at any point we show that we are not ready to handle a situation at hand, high schoolers will sense this and may manipulate the entire setting to where none of the lesson goes as planned. This is where a teacher’s ability to fulfill NCTCS Standard I becomes crucial. Not only must the teacher create activities throughout their lesson to keep the students engaged and facilitate learning, but they must also have back-up plans ready for when the class period does not follow the cookie cutter structure of their 6-point lesson plan. They must demonstrate both their knowledge of the content as well as how to approach it from various angles.