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Current Understanding (December 2007): For me, the best way to learn is to do something hands-on. I have learned the most about instructional strategies by actually going out into classrooms and teaching the lessons I created. My goal for each lesson was to engage every student in the learning process. I did this through using a variety of strategies in each lesson such as using manipulatives, drawing pictures on the board, writing out vocabulary words and definitions, having students work cooperatively in small groups or in pairs, and asking guiding questions for students to discover the material on their own. These various strategies are demonstrated in the three lesson plans listed as evidence for this standard. One of the key things I learned during my field experience this semester at LCWM schools is the need to be flexible. There are so many things that come up in any given day that need attention. As teachers, we really need to be knowledgeable in our subject area so we recognize when there are teachable moments or when students are simply trying to get you off topic. We also must recognize when students are not understanding a topic during our presentation, and then approach the topic from a different angle. In addition, we must recognize when students do understand the material so that we can move forward and encourage higher level thinking, rather than bore them with unnecessary lecture and repetition. My methods courses this past semester opened my eyes to two important instructional strategies which I hope to incorporate into more of my lessons. The first is the use of the discovery approach for teaching and learning mathematics. Although this approach takes more time to plan and teach, it offers students a chance to analyze examples and non-examples, formulate ideas about attributes for the examples and non-examples, create a conjecture about a relationship or concept using the attributes, and then test their hypothesis with data. The class then formulates one agreed-upon definition to use for the concept or topic. The philosophy is that students will better understand the mathematics if they discover it themselves. The Triangle Inequality lesson listed under this standard is a discovery-based lesson that incorporates several instructional strategies, enhances the students' learning experience through the use of a variety of materials, and requires critical thinking skills. The second instructional strategy is the use of technology in the curriculum. We are living in a time period when technology is widely used all around us, and thus should be used in our classrooms as well. This said, the use of technology is only effective when it is implemented in such a way that enhances a learning experience. In math, it is imperative that we teach students how and why algorithms work before we teach them how to perform that same operation on the calculator. In this case, the calculator then allows the student to quickly perform a computation so that they can use higher level thinking skills to analyze or interpret the answer themselves. The Taste-Test lesson plan that is listed under this standard is designed to be used after students have learned about creating graphs on graph paper, and thus leads them through how the calculator will perform the operations for them, creating several different graphs almost instantaneously, so that they can analyze the collected data and make a decision based on their graphs. August 2007 Understanding: To me, Standard 2 and Standard 4 are very closely related. Standard 2 focuses on understanding how students learn, whereas Standard 4 discusses instructional strategies for helping students learn. They seem to go hand in hand. A teacher needs to be able to evaluate how students are responding to the lesson being presented and determine if a different approach needs to be taken. I know that before teaching my mini-lesson to the 6th graders at Franklin Elementary school, I believed that I had thought through all the possible responses to my questions, but the students had different approaches to my problems. A teacher needs to be able to think on his or her feet, and then be flexible enough to approach the subject at hand from that angle. This attitude encourages critical thinking and problem solving. Another experience I have had is at Lincoln Community Center working with the Homework Help program. Each day when I arrived, there were different students with different homework assignments and different questions about their homework. As a good teacher, one must engage each student, present the subject in a way that grabs the student's attention, and then offer another alternative explanation if there are still questions. It was oftentimes challenging, especially when occasionally working with a language barrier, but it kept me on my toes and was very rewarding when homework was successfully accomplished. Baseline Understanding: I am aware of the ways in which I learn the best, but as an educator, it is important to remember that not all students are the same in learning styles. For this reason, it is important to use a variety of instructional strategies so that each student has an opportunity to learn in the ways that they are most comfortable. Return to Standard 4 |
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(507) 625-8256 l karipratt@charter.net |
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