Thursday, May 16

Today I was planning on observing for checking for understanding.  I taught the math lesson today, and the rest of the day was packed with a timed test, class game day, and a number of other opportunities to practice being flexible.  I ended up with nothing written on my sheet.  Instead, I will reflect on the lesson I taught in math. 

            The lesson subject was learning about frequency charts and analyzing data sets with mean, median, and mode.  I followed the Everyday Math plan almost exactly, which is not something I usually like doing.  We started with a warm up, practicing finding the middle place in a list of 5, 15, and 16.  This relates to finding the median.  Next, I showed the students a list of their head measurements (which we’d used for a previous lesson).  The list was unorganized and random.  Next, we made a frequency chart from the data.  After doing that on chart paper at the front as they followed along in their journals, I asked them to find the mean.  They have done this before, but were still very unsure about the concept.  I hadn’t anticipate this taking so long, but they were very lost.  After reviewing mean, we thought of strategies for finding it another way using the frequency chart.  I had to lead them to the answer, hinting at using multiplication.  They’ve been doing multiplication for a while now, but they don’t automatically use it as a strategy.  We all agreed that it was a lot easier to find the mean using the chart.

            Next we worked on the median.  I had written their measurements on post-it notes, so each student brought up their post-it and we ordered them.  I had one student come up to the board and took off one from each side until we got to the middle.  While she did that, I used the frequency chart to cross off my tallies, seeing if we got to the same answer.  They are very confident with median.

            I then introduced the mode as the number that occurs most frequently.  I used this language carefully, however many students became confused about using the biggest number versus the number with the highest frequency.  As I went around during individual work time, I noticed a lot of students getting confused with a list of numbers.  When I referred to the frequency chart, they always could understand that, but had trouble with the list.  I had anticipated the opposite, that they would understand the list and have trouble with the chart. 

            Finally, we made a bar graph of our data.  This was mostly review and practice for them, but also linked to the frequency chart.  It turned into a long lesson, so I didn’t push on this as hard in my discussion of it.  I returned to mean median and mode in my wrap-up.  The students have a hard time remembering which one is which, and struggle finding mean at all.  I think that tomorrow’s lesson should focus strongly on this, especially because these are things they will really need to know for future classes and testing.  Tomorrow I would like to teach them my mean median mode song.  I learned it in grade school and still remember the whole thing.

            Management was, as always, somewhat of a struggle.  I really only had trouble with one resistant student (case study #2), and a table of frequently off-task students.  During individual work time I checked on them, and all but one had the concept down for the most part.  I felt better about being in front of the class.  Mrs. Lance runs a tight ship, and I’m jumping on board with it.  I’m much sillier than her though, and not so harsh about individual issues (broken pencil, dropping things on the ground…some of the smaller stuff).  I think this is one of the reason I’m taken a little less seriously than her, along with the fact that I’ve only known them a few weeks.  One thing that was a definite strength of mine came near the end of the lesson.  I could tell the students were fading and we were just starting our bar graph.  After each step, I had them show me they were ready in sillier ways.  The first was putting their finger on their nose, next was striking a pose, then rubbing their head, etc.  There were only a few students who started to get too silly with it, and once redirected were not a problem.  Overall, I think it was an effective lesson. 

Question of the Day: How does/has your relationship with your principal affected your teaching?

Mrs. Lance had a bad experience with one of her principals in Texas.  This person was very disrespectful to his staff.  Jessica felt unappreciated and disrespected on a daily basis.  After putting up with it for years, she ended up leaving her job.  She said it created a very negative work place.  Interestingly enough, she worked with his wife at another school.  When they interacted outside of the work space, she said he was a completely different person.  Another situation was when Mrs. L’s son went to the school she taught at.  As a parent, she felt that she didn’t get a lot of respect either, but as a teacher had a great and productive relationship.  She said both personal/interaction AND policy/decision making are important to the work environment.