March+8,+2011

Observation #1-- March 8, 2011

Today Brianna was absent because of a doctor's appointment but I went in around 830am to begin observing Colin's class. Right away in the morning Colin works with three middle schoolers on their math. His students are Patrick, Amanda, and Ali. Ali wasn't there today because she was at Children's Hospital recovering from her last treatment of chemo-therapy. She has Leukemia so she is in and out of class on a regular basis. I helped Amanda on her math while Colin was working with Patrick. Amanda was having trouble with the story problems so I began to teach her how to write out story problems. She seemed to understand but I am not sure she will be able to do it on her own. Around 9am, about 10 of Keshava's kids came in to have a math lesson from Colin. He was teaching them about function boxes. They had been working with algebraic expressions and understood how to do things like: "4x" when "x=4". They knew that they had to multiply 4x4 to get the answer. Colin worked forwards first in that he gave the students the function and had them figure out the answer. Then he worked backwards and gave the students the answers and they had to figure out the functions. Colin gave the opportunity to make up a function on the whiteboard and have the other students figure it out. Three students did that. Then it was time for them to leave. I noticed that Colin's teaching is centered around the whiteboard. He does things with Kehsava's kids and with his students on the whiteboard. The way the room is set up, there is not really another option. It works well for the students because Colin will make tables, draw pictures, write out problems. etc. all on the board for the students. So although the media is limited, the teaching to different learning styles is not. I did not notice any special learning needs among the students except one student who had a very hard time paying attention. She was drawing animals in her notebook instead of the problems from the board. I think her name is Maya but I am not sure. One thing that I found particularly interesting was that Colin called the function box a cross between Shrek and Frankenstein and then I called it a "Shrekenstien". I don't think they will forget it now...

The students will be working on reviewing for a test on Thursday and part of the test is the order of operations. I asked Colin if I could dress up as "Dear Aunt Sally" on Thursday to help the students review the order of operations. In my 7th grade classroom, my teacher dressed up as Dear Aunt Sally and I never forgot it. Looking forward to being Aunt Sally :)