Week Three of England Student Teaching

Teaching Math and Taking Over the Class

This week in Mathematics we started teaching our third grade class fractions! I was very excited because besides teaching Physical Education, I hadn't really got any full class teaching in until this week. So Tuesday I started with an introductory lesson on fractions, teaching the most common fractions and working in the vocabulary, supporting and modeling the terms for fractions and their parts, and showing how to split a whole in equal parts. Students really loved the hands-on activity I used, in which we created a fraction wall to show how one whole can be split into equal parts (1/2, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8, 1/12, 1/3, 1/5, etc.). I gave students three different colored strips of paper so that they could split halves and quarters with one color, split thirds and sixths with another color, and split fifths with the last color.
To the right, I have put a picture of the classroom fraction wall I hung in our classroom that I made along with the class when they worked with their strips of paper, in which we as a group folded and labeled our strips, and discussed how they create one whole as I posted my strips on our Mathematics bulletin board. The students were highly engaged in the activity and were excited to see how the could break down a whole into equal parts, especially when I said, "Okay, keep folding again, now undo your folds and count how many equal parts we have split our whole piece into, what is this fraction?" Students caught on very fast to this activity and understood how the whole visually broke into equal parts. 

The next few days, I continued to teach Mathematics and used our previous activity to model to students how to look for the fraction and how to write it. We continued with identifying and shading fractions, then the last two days we worked on equivalent fractions and my higher level students worked on adding fractions with similar denominators. I noticed that building the fractions wall provided my students with the support at looking at how the fractions was written, identifying equivalent fractions, and adding fractions. 

Taking Over the Class
I also got the chance to teach the class for two whole days while my cooperating teacher was out at a conference. I had an assistant teacher in the class which helped me prepare for each morning and also worked with groups when breaking the class up in different levels, but mainly I was independently teaching the class and getting to step into the lead role teacher. It was interesting for me to see how my cooperating teacher's attention getters would work, how classroom management and behavior management provided me with control of the classroom and the schedule for the day, and what students were really capable of doing when I was full time teaching and challenging their skills.

 I felt that even though my teacher used some good tools to get student's attention, they were not automatically recognizing that I wanted their attention and that a different attention tool needed to be utilized for me not to have to repeat myself and wait to gather all of their attention. My CT used a bell and a shaker, but after the first day of this not working quite so well for me, I decided to teach students a clapping pattern in which I asked them to repeat when I started and wait for directions. This provided me with an opportunity to see who was not paying attention and quickly provide a way to break up the noise and talking in the classroom.

I also learned in the two days of full time teaching how the classroom behavior chart was not useful in the classroom. The whole school has in place a system in which they use a chart in the classroom to track student's behavior, like the PBIS system that some school use in the states. But this system uses three cards, a privilege card which supports students in working hard and recognizing outstanding behavior, a warning card which is supposed to warn children about their behavior and asking them to take a short time out, and then a consequence card which can land them in another classroom for a time out or in detention during lunch. The problem with this system is that most teachers have a different way of getting to each card, with the fact that my teacher gives several warnings, more than three or four, before she even gives out a warning card, and when giving out a consequence card the student has to do something that is repeated again after getting a warning card or if it is heinous. But even when my teacher gives students a warning card or consequence card, they do not get any real consequence because she will usually have a short talk with them and then not even give them a timeout. Or her verbal warnings are repeated throughout the lesson but then nothing happens to them, so they have no consequence for the behavior or actions that have interrupted or stopped the lesson many times. I felt during teaching that it was best to give students three warnings about their behavior, and if they continued a fourth time they would get a yellow warning card and they would serve a timeout during their own time. If I had to continue warning them after already getting a warning card, they would them get a consequence card and would serve an extended amount of time or lose all of their break and would have to complete the work that they were not doing during the lesson. I felt that this gave me more control of the behavior in the classroom and allowed me to not have to stop my lesson so many times just to remind one or two students of their behavior. Although students were not used to this system that I was using, they seemed to understand by the second day that I was not going to give them open warnings without their being a consequence for their actions if warned many times. I felt that even though this was not the way my CT did things, the class understood that negative behavior or interruption of learning was not going to be accepted and that I would acknowledge their behavior if it was not going to be tolerated.  I felt that within the two days of full time teaching, it provided me with control of the classroom as the lead of the class and helped students understand the importance of learning and being engaged in the activity. 


From this change in utilizing these two tools differently, I found that my students worked harder and were more focused in the activities we did and allowed me to challenge their learning to see what they were really capable of doing. My students worked hard for me and worked well in their groups, and this allowed me to assess their learning and see how they could be challenged in future lessons. I was excited to be able to challenge them and help them move forward in learning new knowledge and skills. I think this was the reason why Mathematics this week was so fun for me because I could really see how students worked, what they understood, and how I could extend the lesson the next day to include new skills or even provide more support based on their knowledge and engagement.

Overall, I felt very confident as a teacher after being able to teach full time for two days because my students worked so hard for me and because I could implement new strategies to teaching that improved the success of the classroom and the environment for learning.