Student Teaching

Finals are finished, grades are in, and Christmas is nearly here!! Christmas came early for me. I've been able to observe for a few hours today and yesterday at Father Marquette Middle School which is where I will be student teaching this upcoming winter semester!
I can honestly say that I've never been in a more welcoming and respectful school. I had more smiles, greetings, and doors held open for me over the past two days than I can ever remember before. I'm so excited to get to teach these exceptional young people!!

My First Class Alone

Yesterday morning I taught at Marquette Senior High School. I developed my own lesson plan and used the text for supplemental materials. I got the students thinking as soon as my introduction was over. The students were asked to look at the 5 graphs on the overhead and determine which ones they thought were linear functions.
We started off by discussing the definition of a function -- the graphed equation passes the vertical line test. Next, we had to tackle the linear part of it. I wrote the word on the board which helped the visual learners to see the word "line" within linear. We did a few examples of T charts and I had the students help me find the y values by plugging in various values for x.
The students were put in groups and worked on some problems. I left some of the important concepts on the board for the students to refer to. They helped one another and I circulated the room to provide additional support.
With 15 minutes remaining, I pulled the class together again to do a few of the problems that a majority of the students struggled through. Some of the classes had enough time to get started on their homework assignment while others did not.
I found myself tweaking my lesson with each new class - I taught 3 periods of Algebra One. If I were to do it over again, I'd do a story problem on the board with the class. My observing teacher had some great suggestions to check for student understanding. My favorite one was: Draw a line that is not a function. Answer: Vertical line. Why? It doesn't pass the vertical line test!
My first class was a great experience!

Observations

In my observations at Gwinn Middle School, I've seen students excited about learning! A science class has been acting as Consumer Analysts. They have been chewing bubble gum, making observations, and rating different brands of gum. To avoid bias, the instructor has unwrapped the different brands of gum and placed them into baggies lettered A thru D. I was lucky enough to get the week-long lesson plan for this unit :) It's been a very effective way to get the kids excited and involved in their own learning. They look forward to Science class :)

NCTM Conference

I'm so excited! This time next week I will be in Minnesota for the National Council of the Teachers of Mathematics conference. I look forward to meeting colleagues and gaining new ideas. I can't wait to go shopping for my future classroom!! Hopefully I can get some lesson plans written on the ride to Minneapolis.

Overwhelmed

I feel totally overwhelmed. For one of my classes, I have turned in several assignments without feedback and it's the 7th week. Plus, I have three projects that are outstanding for this same class. I feel like I am floating around and have no idea what the end product is supposed to be.
**Note to self: When teaching, give assignments that have meaning, describe the meaning, have concrete expectations, and GIVE FEEDBACK. Let's finish something before we start something else..... or in this case... 3 somethings.

Week 6

So it's 3pm on Tuesday and I'm finally eating breakfast. I've been on campus for 4 hours. On the upside, the semester is flying by. I'm getting really excited for the NCTM Conference in MN. It's in November and I'm so ready to gather materials and ideas from the teachers at this conference! I've been investigating some really exciting math problems dealing with license plates.

Question: If a license plate has exactly 2 letters and 3 numbers and letters and digits can be repeated (ie XX222), how many combinations are possible?!

Stay tuned!

Observation

I'm running on just a few hours of sleep yet again. I was able to observe at Gwinn Middle School yesterday morning. It was so exciting to see how the teacher set up her classroom and ran the hour. She had a quiet reading area filled with Science books where a special needs child spent a majority of the hour. For another class, we all went outside to identify trees. The kids got to see science up close and personal. The teacher had so much extra knowledge that she was able to answer questions on the fly. The kids were engaged and I really think they learned something. Not being familiar with identity keys myself, I asked the kids to explain it to me and to help me identify the trees. What's a petiole? What's the difference between a complex leaf and a simple leaf? The students at Gwinn Middle School can tell you!

Mathematics

In searching for a meaningful problem to present to my Math Methods class this upcoming Monday, I became extremely frustrated. After an hour and a half on the Internet searching for things like "Math Brain Teasers", "Challenging Math Problems", "Math for High School Students", and the like, I found nothing I could use. I finally stumbled upon the concept of upright numbers. For example, 123 is an upright number because 1+2 = 3. The first two digits must equal the third. Through an hour or so of investigation all the positive 3-digit integers that are upright numbers, I was able to locate some patterns that I was unable to find posted on the Internet. I feel like I actually may have contributed something to mathematics today - what a feeling!

Dark Parking Lots

Oh the life of a college student...
I am sitting on NMU's campus in my car on a Saturday night for the sole purpose of Internet usage. How sad. So many of my classes have online requirements that I have to have an Internet connection to complete assignments. If only Internet access was included in tuition...

Back to School...

It's Saturday, August 29, 2009 and here I am in Starbucks, drinking a venti raspberry white mocha. It's a week into the semester and it's raining. I have so much to accomplish this weekend. I've made a considerable dent in the pile, but I have enough left that I felt the need to order a VENTI to help me stay up to finish it all.

I'm really excited about my classes this semester. I know I've chosen the right field. Education is exactly where I'm supposed to be.

I'm also relieved that I already have this blog set up so that I can use it for my Media and Tech class. Phew. That saves me some time :)

Until next time...

Carl's House

Last week, my instructor opened his house to my class. We got to see the maple syrup set-up that he has and the way his aquariums are set up. We had an opportunity to hold a living starfish and to poke an anemone. It truly was a hands-on experience. Carl had amazing artifacts. My favorite was a dinosaur bone. It really got me thinking about my past experiences with my teachers and I can honestly say that I think that this is the first time I've been a part of a class that was invited into an instructor's home. I wish we could have class there every week. And pizza and root beer too :)
College professors have more of an ability to invite students into their homes than secondary teachers would have. However, even though I might not invite my students into my home, maybe we could take our class outside the classroom and experience math and science in nature. The golden spiral and the golden ratio can be found outdoors. Rainbows have scientific and mathematical properties.
With all of the classes that I've attended this semester, the few hours I spent at Carl's house will not be forgotten. It brought the class together. We had a bonding experience. And of course, we learned a lot. It was so interesting and it kept my attention. I was honestly disappointed when it was time for us to leave.
As a teacher, I want to find ways to engage my students so that they won't want the learning to end either. Stepping out of the box, mixing things up, and trusting my students just may be the ticket to make learning an exciting adventure for them.

What a gem!

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be a part of what I would refer to as a social experiment. In class, I was asked to get into a group of three people. Together, we formed a country and had to use our countries "resources" which were represented as gemstones to barter with the other "countries" to diversify our resources. Thinking this would be a fun experiment, I was ready to get started. Something I wasn't anticipating was the issues that would arise from the group dynamics. The instructor didn't really offer any rules. We could trade or not trade with the other countries. We could trade as a country or we could take some of our country's resources and run off as an individual and trade for individual gain.
I decided out of personal choice, to trade as a group. I didn't want to be a traitor. I wanted to help my country. My group mates felt the same way. So, we chose to trade as a group.
With a business background, I had a different view of resource worth than my group members did which caused a lot of head-butting and a sort of stalemate between the three of us.
I thought it was very interesting to see how outside elements played into how we ran our group. My business background affected the way that I thought about the challenge. However, the other two girls did not have a business background. Unfortunately, I had made up my mind about how I wanted to attack the challenge and they had made up their mind to attack the problem in a different way. Neither myself, nor the other two girls were willing to budge on our solutions.
Group projects have always bothered me. I have tried to learn to become whatever the group needs me to be. I am a born leader, but I have the ability to be a follower, if I feel that the group leader has the ability to lead. I felt that I had a fresh idea that no one else in the class had, but I wasn't being listened to. It is frustrating to be in a group and feel that your ideas are not being heard.
This was a growing experience for me. Looking back, I should have taken some of the country's resources and went off on my own. I never dreamed that values, educational background, and communication style would have such an impact on something as simple as the trading of gemstones. It was really interesting and as I said, quite a learning experience.

Eye Opener

In yesterday’s class, some of my classmates were asked to be “substitute teachers” for the class period. These classmates were unprepared to teach the lesson. I was in Danielle’s group. Danielle took the challenge in stride. It was a biology lesson using onion cells and microscopes. I never enjoyed using microscopes. I could never focus them correctly and ended up seeing my eyelashes more often than the specimen I was supposed to be examining. I complained and Danielle readjusted the lesson so that she could help me focus the microscope. Rachel and I used different solvents – she used a hypertonic solution and I used a hypotonic solution. Danielle drew pictures for us and had us label the different parts of the cell. I compared a cell in a hypertonic solution to a raisin, a shriveled piece of fruit. Using this comparison, Danielle changed the words she was using and incorporated the “raisin” thought into our discussion. It made it much easier for me to understand the concepts rather than using the big terms. The three of us all used one microscope so that I could have help from both the “teacher” and from my other classmate.
I want to use Danielle’s technique in my own classroom. I will surely have students who will not want to participate in class activities because they have their own hang-ups related to the subject I’ll be teaching. Danielle was able to make a few minor adjustments to keep me interested in the activity. I got a lot more out of the activity since my teacher listened to my problems and re-adjusted the lesson so that I could accomplish the assignment.

Negativity

Yesterday, my class had to choose a topic for our last research project. We decided, after about an hour (!), to investigate the idea of "Space on Earth". My group, Danielle, Jessica, and I came up with the original idea. We envisioned our planet without an atmosphere. The ozone layer was gone. If that were to happen, what changes would have to be made for humans to survive? What would happen to our water supply, oxygen supply, plant life, and animal life? What about problems caused by ultraviolet rays like skin cancer? The class overlooked our idea for the first part of the discussion which frustrated me since I thought the Space on Earth concept was a great idea. We could even tie the rising issue of global warming into our inquiries. I felt like the idea offered something for everyone.
It seems that there is always that one person in every class that feels the need to find the negatives in every situation. I've been trying to decide how to manage someone like that in my own future classrooms. I think Carl did a good job in providing a list of possible topics for this person to show that the Space On Earth idea was a plausible one. After yesterday, I almost wish that we, as a class, had no say in our research topic. We could have avoided an hour long discussion/argument about what we'd be looking into.
I don't have much patience and so yesterday's class period was challenging for me. I remained quiet for a good part of the discussion process. I tend to be pretty persuasive in my arguments and didn't want to influence the class too early. However, when each topic we visited was getting picked apart, I had to step in. At that point, I didn't even care which topic we decided on, merely that we decide on one at all!! I can actually feel myself getting frustrated all over again just by reliving yesterday's class period.
The big issue that was raised for me yesterday was dealing with negativity in the classroom. This particular individual has been negative in other classes as well and it always bothers me. I can't understand why people cannot just look at the brighter side of life and move on! I've been wanting to say something to this individual since the beginning of the semester, but I don't know how to approach it and I'm not sure if it would be appropriate. Furthermore, how could I handle that problem in my own classroom. People are entitled to their opinions - I do not have a problem with that. I just get tired of having to prolong class discussions because the same person doesn't like EVERY aspect of an idea EVERY time we discuss something.

Science Olympiad / Research Project / Bubbles

The Science Olympiad is tomorrow. Unfortunately, I got scheduled to work so I won't be able to attend the competition. I'm confident that not only my group, but that my class did an amazing job in preparing activities for the students to complete. The tasks are challenging, but fun. I'm really glad that I had an opportunity to be a part of it this year and would love to get involved again next year. The planning process has helped me gather ideas for my own classroom. If it's done the right way, science can be educational and really fun at the same time!!

As far as my research project goes, I think I've got a solid foundation. I have had my fair share of cavities and my dentist told me how terrible soda is for your teeth. When I had to come up with a research idea, I thought it would be interesting to see just how bad soda is for your teeth. I've been told that chocolate causes acne and that you'll cramp if you swim within thirty minutes of eating, but I don't know either of those things to be true. I wanted to explore something that is relevant to college students and possibly to my own future students. I know that soda is bad for your teeth because I've started doing some preliminary research, but I'm still really excited to see how much of the substance I'm using will erode/dissolve into the soda.

I've never thought about how much fun bubbles can be. We explored bubbles in a lab this past week and I felt like a kid again. I was so excited to see the next bubble and to try to catch them in my hands without popping them. I could use this lab in my own classrooms or when I'm babysitting. I loved that the bubbles would take a spherical shape regardless of the shape that was used to make them. The coat hangers still resulted in spherical bubbles to do the stability of that shape. I want to be the kind of teacher whose students want to come to class and want to explore. I've never liked labs before because I always thought they had to be rigid. Now, I've come to realize that labs don't have to be rigid at all. (Of course, in using chemicals, rigidity may be necessary.) My students can explore and form questions. I want them to be intrigued and excited about science. I remember things better when I've seem them in action rather than reading about the outcome. I've truly come to realize that the lab scene can be laid back and really interactive. The bubble lab changed my outlook on labs.

Science Olympiad

So my group for the Science Olympiad project consists of Jessica, Carrie, Natalie, and me. Our project focuses on the density of two objects; one regularly shaped object and one irregularly shaped object. The set-up of the experiment was going extremely well. Everyone was doing their part and we felt that we had a solid idea. Then we had to figure out how to grade the project. What a pain! We brainstormed grading criteria. We knew that we wanted to grade the students based off of the methods they used, their knowledge of the density equation, the ability to perform the experiment, and the accuracy of their calculations. However, putting that into a rubric with instructions for someone else to grade proved to be extremely tedious. Plus, we had to calculate acceptable ranges of answers. For example, to receive full credit, a student's answer would have to fall between 1.1 and 1.2, but to receive partial credit it could fall between 1.0 and 1.4. Several of these calculations had to be done so that the proctor would know how we wanted the experiment scored. It turned out to be a huge headache and thankfully Carrie volunteered to figure out the ranges so that our group could be finished for the day. It frustrated me because I think the tedious process could have been easily averted if a member of our group could be present at the Science Olympiad. Instead, we had to make a precise list of instructions on how to perform and grade the experiment. Simplicity is definitely a top priority for me in setting up labs. I think that students can gain tons of knowledge from a lab whether it's intensely difficult or just somewhat thought-provoking. I also realized that I do not want anyone else to grade my students' assignments. The process of putting together a scoring rubric was more difficult than coming up with the experiment itself! Things like significant figures were completely thrown out of the process because of the difficulty we had in explaining the scoring process. I am grateful to Carrie for taking one for the team. I think that our team definitely accomplished a lot on Thursday even though three of us were very frustrated. Our group benefitted from Carrie's patience. We've definitely been able to identify and utilize the individual strengths of our group members.