Field Experience Reflection

I conducted my observation hours at STEM Magnet Academy, which is an elementary/middle school that “provide a rigorous and innovative academic program, while creating the blueprint for STEM education within Chicago Public Schools” through “the use of cutting-edge technology and an integrated, multidisciplinary approach to teaching and learning.” The classrooms I observed were math classrooms, in varying grade levels: two sixth grade, two seventh grade, and one eighth grade.

One literacy strategy that my cooperating teacher incorporates in her classroom is the idea of constantly showing why a certain calculation was done. It is important to note that the math done at this stage is rather trivial, but a lot of it, if not all of it, can be put into simple word problems! For example, in one of the sixth grade classrooms, this was a bell ringer:

What is cool about this is that students can just act this out. That way, they are practicing their integer skills with a competitive edge to it. They are too focused on the game that they forget they are learning. To add on to the idea of bellringers, since some word problems in these math classes use objects that a student may be unfamiliar with, such as a postcard, the teacher actually brought a postcard to show the dimensions of length and width.

Another literacy strategy that I found interesting is the act of self critique. The teacher conducted a scavenger hunt where an answer of a math problem will tell you “Go to station 3.” In order for a student to properly solve the problem in station 3, the correct answer had to be figured out in the previous station. The student must then go through his or her own reasoning again and of course, if no flaw is detected by the student, the teacher was always there for assistance, as well as walking around stations and making sure students were on the right track in their thinking. Now, when a student would come and ask the teacher a question, the teacher would always rephrase that question to get students thinking, or start from the beginning (“So, what is it that we are trying to find?”)

A mistake that happened on behalf of the teacher and I was that the next sixth grade class had the same bell ringer. In the previous class, a student came up to the board and wrote out his work. Nobody erased it, but the students found that out by the time the class was going over the bell ringer. Although this may be seen as a bad thing to occur, it proved pretty beneficial because the students were able to analyze the student’s reasoning and determine whether or not they agree with the work done.