Teaching Appraisal Eight

Guy Reichenbach observed me teaching 9I this morning. I had this class period one on a Monday. One thing that I took away from this observation was my need to differentiate the learning needs in the class. There are a couple of children that are much more advanced than the rest of the class and there are a couple on the other end of the spectrum who need a lot of one-on-one guidance in their learning. I have worked on developing a box of activities to just have in my class that students can go to when they have finished set work (idea from Lois's appraisal last year). For the advanced students I am also setting them challenges like asking them to become peer-teachers for others, and to write their own word problems that I can then use with the whole class. This gets them thinking more abstractly about the mathematical skills and wondering about the context they are writing about - is it realistic that a bottle of milk costs $124.68, no, so what would be a more realistic price to incorporate in the problem? This brings in the "real world" aspect of mathematics! So far, I think these students have really liked these challenges. I have noticed that they find it especially hard to articulate their understanding of the skills so that they can teach someone else. With more practice this will no doubt become easier but I have already seen some wonderful moments between these students and others when the ones struggling have that light bulb moment. I can tell it is a real confidence boost for my advanced students too.

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