Field Experience Reflection

I observed the 7th and 8th-grade mathematics classes at Telpochcalli Elementary School. Telpochcalli Elementary School is a Chicago public school with 98.3% of students are Hispanic and more than 60% of students have "limited English proficiency". Most of the teachers and teacher assistants are fluent in Spanish. 

By the time that I observed the 8th-grade class, they were introducing linear equation. Literacy strategies were applied at the beginning of the lecture by passing out a paper sheet which contained a data table and three questions which were: what information is given? What do you know? What information do you need? Students were asked to try to read the information on the table and answer these questions by themselves. The teacher tried to engage her students to move on with a faster pace by repeating explain those three questions and what they should look for from the table.   She walked around the classroom to check if everyone were working on those questions. I saw some of the students were struggling and started talking something else that was not related to the math content. The teacher reminded them to stay on the task with high voice volume. It seemed she tried to hold the class back to learning climate, unfortunately, it was not easy.  Discipline in this classroom seemed a challenge. The teacher had to stop lecturing and asked the students if they need extra help instead of blaming them. Providing a positive learning environment probably was one of her teaching strategies. 

 The teacher demonstrated her problem-solving strategy on exampling how to calculate the slope and y-intercept in order to complete a linear equation. After she finished all the steps, she went back to guide the students to answer those three questions. Now, students more understood the mathematics literacy by looking the real math example. The teacher did a very organized job on showing students step by step to find out the linear equation, but she was not very familiar with how to solve the once linear equation that contains factor fractions. She spent over 10 minutes on it which distract students focus from the lecture. I thought she should prepare the lecture better before the class because it should not be a problem for a math discipline teacher.

I learned differently in this experience. The teacher more focuses on how much the students learn than how much score they got from the quizzes by giving them more chances to make the correction on the quizzes instead of recording the original scores, which keep students' positive learning attitude.