Instruction & Delivery Reflection

Highly Effective Strategies Friday, February 22nd When I started the apprenticeship in this Algebra I class, I noticed that many students did not take notes and often complained that they did not understand certain concepts because they forgot how to solve the problems. With that information in mind, I created a note sheet in which to guide students notetaking efforts. The format for the note sheet was simple, a spot for the engage, explore/explain and elaborate. Students were told that I expected them to solve their bell-work problem under the section for the engage, example problems and notes where to be placed under the explore/explain section and the elaborate section was reserved for an activity or additional space for explore/explain notes if time was limited. I also developed my PowerPoint slides so students could explicitly see if we were working under the engage, explore/explain or elaboration portion of the lesson. This approach helped students to develop a consistent routine in the class, provided notes in which to reference while completing homework, and kept students engaged throughout the lesson. On this particular day, students were learning how to express numbers in scientific notation and finding the products and quotients of numbers expressed in scientific notation. I did not expect students to have to rely on their notes or to be as thorough as usual. However, I was surprised to see that many students took meticulous notes, referenced the notes that they took during time provided to solve homework problems, and jotted additional notes when I circulated to answer individual questions. I was very pleased with the increased level of note-taking and how students understood how beneficial it was to their learning goals. Wednesday, March 13th Today, the class needed to cover multiplying polynomials using the distributive property as well as multiplying binomials using the foil method. Although this was the second day for covering the material, students were still struggling to grasp the concept matter. While I covered the material the prior week, the weekend and two days of district on track testing had caused many students to forget much of the material. As I am a strong advocate or discovery or concept recall through group work, I asked students to work in pairs to solve example problems. I specifically asked students to work with someone that they had not paired with in a previous activity. Pairing students allowed me the flexibility to circulate the students, kept students focused as they had a preset amount of time to finish working the problems and students were able to complement their partners weaknesses or strengths to grasp the material. After the problem solving session, I required all groups to stand up. Student pairs were asked to come to the board to solve an assigned problem. If they solved the problem and explained their reasoning, they were allowed to take their seats. This kept students accountable for their work, developed presentation and explanation skills and kept students engaged. This also encouraged students to volunteer to solve problems! I believe this is approach works well with in this particular class and is something that I may use in the future. I will consider increasing the group size to three students and randomly choose a student from each group to come to the board instead of all group members.

Less Effective Strategy Thursday, March 14th As I am an advocate of group work, I wanted to try something called Row Effect. The goal was to present each row with a different set of two problems. Each row was supposed to solve their problems and during the explanation portion of the lesson, present and explain how they solved the problem in order to regain their seats. While I thought it was a good idea in logic, it was not the most practical idea. First, sometimes students should be expected to engage in problem solving skills by themselves. Therefore, students need to feel a level of accountability for their own learning experience. Secondly, when groups extend beyond two or three individuals, the focus turns from problem solving to gossiping and off task behavior. The lesson for today focused on finding the squares or products of differences. While many students quickly grasped the material and finished their problems, other students either copied other group members work or were clueless when asked to solve the questions. There were also not enough problems for each row to solve, which could have contributed to the lack of effectiveness of this approach. Therefore, I had to engage in a more than usual amount of individual instruction as I circulated. In future, I will make sure that I find ways for students to be responsible for their learning. If I require them to work in groups, I will have students solve the problems individually, then compare their solution with a partner and have the students sign off on their partners work. I will also limit the size of groups to no more than three students. While most students eventually understood the concept, the level of task behavior and lack of understanding was not ideal in the beginning stages of this lesson. Wednesday, March 20th In my third period class, we implemented a new strategy in the classroom to reach students. Many students in this particular class receive supplemental educational services and there and thus, there are three instructors in the class (the mentor teacher, exceptional student education teacher and the apprentice teacher). In efforts to individualize and present the curriculum, students were placed in three groups of eights with groups developed by math ability. Each teacher took a group of eight and was responsible for all instruction that occurred. As the apprentice teacher, I assigned the homework, set the general expectations and redirected the general behavior of students if it affected the entire classroom. Initially the planseemed to work, however some groups advanced faster than others did and some groups had more behavior problems than others did. Therefore, it was difficult to ensure that all students saw the same example problems and thus had an equal opportunity to complete homework or understand the material. While this was only one of the first days of implementing this idea, it was a bit disappointing because certain students did well with the changes and other students seemed to still struggle. While this was a great idea to lower the teacher to student ratio, it does require some tweaks. First, it is important to make sure all students receive the same level of instruction and opportunity to excel. Therefore, I will change the approach to initial direct instruction by me, an allotted time for groups to solve an example problem, return to whole group instruction to allow an individual to solve and explain the problem and end with an opportunity for all students to ask questions. I believe this will keep students focused, make sure that students can see problems solved and engage in the problem

solving process and finally have an opportunity to ask question to group members, their group instructor and me. I believe this will develop into a highly effective strategy in this class.