Karen Anderson

RAPIL Spring 2016

Field Experience and Make-Up Reflections
School: Thomas Jefferson High School
Teacher: Diane Storey
Class: Integrated Math A and B (9th grade)
Textbook: Core-Plus Mathematics Course 1 - Contemporary Mathematics in Context, McGrawHill 2008
Instructional Strategies
Diane and I utilized a variety of instructional strategies during our classes. The textbook, CorePlus Mathematics, is very progressive in my opinion. All of the content is presented in the
context of real-life problems, and students are asked to represent the information in a variety of
ways. For example, when learning about linear functions, students are asked to display a table
of values, create a graph of the line, write a y= function rule, and write a recursive NOWNEXT rule for each situation. This gives students a variety of representations, some visual and
some symbolic, which gives each student a chance to access the content.
Each class begins with students working individually on a Do it Now problem, which usually
takes about five minutes. The questions are usually review material, not only from the current
class but from content covered in previous years. Occasionally the problems would include
material that students had not learned yet, but that would be on standardized tests, for example,
using side-angle-side to identify congruent triangles. I believe that the review material is very
beneficial to students--repeated exposure helps them really learn the material, and to integrate it
with new material that they are learning. However, I am a little more concerned about presenting
questions about material students havent even learned yet--the discussion of how to determine
the answer almost always comes down to a brief introduction to the concept (ex., what similar
triangles are and how to determine them, as well as test taking strategies, such as eliminating
the ones they feel are not likely to be correct). I fear that this might further some students belief
that math is not for them, and that the subject is in a way rigged against them--I certainly
would be annoyed to walk in and be asked a question that my instructors knew I wouldnt be
able to figure out.
Technology was integrated fairly seamlessly into the classes. We used Kahoot as quick
formative assessment quizzes, Desmos to graph lines and curves, as well as other activities,
such as one that allowed students to experiment with the volume and nets of 3D shapes visually
[link] and the length of the sides of triangles. In several activities, students were given the option
of writing their responses on a printed worksheet or filling out the worksheet on their districtprovided Chromebooks. Each class had a Google Classroom, where announcements, links and
assignments were posted. Daily assignments and schedules were also written up on the marker

board in front of the classroom, although it seemed that several students did not regularly look
at this information.
The desks in Dianes classroom are always set up in pods of 4 desks facing each other to allow
for peer-to-peer interactions. The desks are only lined up in the more traditional single-desk
rows during exams.
It is clear she has put thought into her classroom routine, and I did my best to stick to it when I
taught my lessons, since students were already quite familiar with her routines. A few notable
things:
the weeks assignments are listed on board in front of class, and
on the class website, which is added to daily
at the beginning of the term she has students write their names on
popsicle sticks, and uses these to call on students
at the beginning of class students do Do it now bellringers
the textbook has problems divided into Investigations, which are
done in table groups, Summarize the Math, also done in table groups, and then
Check your Understanding and On Your Own problems, which are expected
to be completed individually (although students are welcome to help each other).
I think this shows a great balance in group work and individual work.
there are several posters in classroom (what great
mathematicians do, CUBES reading strategy, etc)
However, I felt that there were a lot of posters in the classroom, and she never really referred to
any of them during the lessons that I observed, so I am not sure about how useful those posters
are. I think it is easy for students to tune out posters when there are several,along with other
more general posters encouraging hard work and other things.
Communication
I believe Diane is a very competent communicator. She has a reputation in the school, and she
seems to know a lot students very well--especially since she is the bowling coach and girls
softball coach. When talking about an individual student, she often would mention their friends
or where she sees them hang out a lot--she is very with it.
She often spends time in the hallways yelling at students to get to class and quit hanging
around--but it seems most of the students do this affectionately. She says shes even had a lot
students call her Mom on more than one occasion.
During class she does not hesitate to call out individual students who are on their phone,
speaking too loudly, etc. However, the most valuable classroom management technique I
learned from her was to speak to disruptive students individually in the hallway. I feel this give
students a chance to explain their actions and to back down without losing face with the other
students in the class. In one instance of my instruction, a normally upbeat and well-behaved
student rudely refused several times to put her phone away, which was very out of character for

her. I called her into the hallway and expressed my concern, and while she did not tell me what
was wrong, we were able to come to an agreement. While taking her out of class for a moment
called attention to her, it was hopefully less invasive than if I had given her a detention in front of
everyone.
She also communicates with parents when required. She called the parents of a student who
skipped class, and mentioned that she contacted the parents of a student who fell asleep often
in class and arranged with them for him to have a bed time.
All of the students have access to the Google classroom for the class, which provides links,
announcements and assignments. Students have access to their grades at all times, and I
believe the parents do as well.
These are all things that I hope to be able to do in my classroom as well.
Content Knowledge
Diane is also very good at expressing the content in a way students can understand. Once she
explained how nets were used in her job at a shipping company creating boxes. She also gave
various examples of when math is used in her previous jobs, discussed an AIDS infection rate
question and world population question by bringing in outside info, providing additional context
for the students. I believe that this is one of the best ways to incorporate the Common Core
Literacy Standards and 21st Century skills--to incorporate them side-by-side with the subject
matter.
When I taught a lesson on best-fit lines, I found data with shoe size and heights of people and
had students determine an equation to a best fit line that fit the data. Students were then given
the shoe sizes of some teachers and asked to predict their height. They were fairly accurate,
and students seemed to enjoy calculating the heights--they also calculated their own height, and
some were surprised by the accuracy. It also seemed to encourage deep thinking--one student
grappled with the meaning of the best-fit line when the x coordinates were zero or negative--he
asked what could be meant by such shoe sizes. This lead to a discussion of how our shoe sizes
are somewhat arbitrary, and that the best-fit line does have certain numbers that would not
make sense--we would not expect a shoe size of 100, for example, even though we can
calculate it.

Curricula Design & Implementation

Diane does not write down a detailed lesson plan for each lesson, but she and the other
teachers do plan out each unit in a detailed manner that includes lesson objectives and
assessments. The unit plan lists the standards that are addressed by the unit.

They have decided to use an order that is very different from the textbook, which was decided
by the Freshman team, a set of freshmen teachers. Some chapters in the textbook are skipped,
and in the 1A class there is an additional unit not in the textbook that was created by the district
to shore up some of the students weaker skills, such as number sense and solving multistep
equations.
I created detailed lesson plans for each of the lessons that I taught, including the Core
Standards and objectives. However, in the future, I will also include prerequisites in my lesson
plans. This is something that we learned in class and would help me a lot--there were a couple
of times during my lessons that students were lacking a skill ( such as being able to multiply
fractions), which if I had thought more about the prerequisites my students would need, I could
have made sure to start of with a brief review of the skill.
Assessment
Diane uses a variety of formative assessments in her class -- the students answers and
participation in the Do It Now provide a way to assess some of their previous knowledge or their
ability to grapple with unknown topics. I used a Kahoot quiz during one lesson to assess
students learning of exponential functions, and she said she has used them before.
Occasionally she would require students complete a short problem or worksheet as an Exit
ticket.
At the beginning of each trimester, she also has students complete two self-assessment
surveys--one which asks students about how confident they feel about material covered in
previous classes and asks them to set goals for the trimester and reflect on their actions as a
student (questions like: What was your biggest distraction in class last trimester. What is one
thing you did really well last semester). Another self-assessment survey asked students to
reflect on what teamwork is and how they feel they contribute to a team. I enjoyed looking at the
results of both of these surveys. A few students didnt take them seriously, but the majority did,
and I was surprised by the response of some of the students. I think this form of assessment
helps us to know students at a more individual level and to encourage them to be self-reflective
too!
Homework in her class is turned in only for a completion credit.
Summative assessments are given at the end of each chapter in the book. It is a traditional
format where students have one or two class periods to complete the exam. Students who fail
or who are unhappy with their grade on an exam can retake the test once. However, they have
to complete a recovery review assignment before they are allowed to re-take the test. I really
liked this way of allowing for retakes, because the extra review work encourages students to
work on hard on the first test, but ensures that they receive extra practice and support before
they can re-take it.

Professional and Reflective Practitioner

Diane is a veteran teacher who has taught for many years. She is very professional and very
self-reflective. She was always willing to discuss her lesson plan or my lesson plan and what
could be changed or improved. She often made changes to her lessons in response to working
with the other teacher that taught the same course, to keep both groups on the same schedule
for exams.
As a freshman teacher, she works with the Freshmen Team, a group of 9th teachers who
reflect on students and assist them with school work and monitors students for any red flags
that indicate they may be struggling or have behavior issues that need to be addressed. These
teachers also attended a meeting discussing how to teach and cultivate grit in students through
several activities interspersed throughout the trimester. All of the teachers in this group
collaborated together to help students and to come up with solutions for any issues. I was very
impressed by the creativity of this group. I hope that I will be able to surround myself with a
group of colleagues that I can work with like this group. However, the school where I will be
teaching is much smaller, so I expect to be working with teachers from different subjects and
grade levels more.
She also works with Vertical Teams, which are groups of teachers from other grade levels to
reflect on students and assist them with ensuring that students get a coherent and continuous
math curriculum.
Diane knows all of her students and easily discusses individual students, and remarks on what
could be modified for lessons to make it better for them. She also seems to have a good
understanding/working relationship with the school counselors and other teachers to manage
students with additional needs.
She is also reading a book about teaching students with a history of abuse. All in all, she is a
very reflective and active practitioner.

Class Make Up Reflections

Feb 13th Class Make Up (6 additional observation hours)
School: Underwood High School
Teacher: Greg Bachman, Elizabeth Dillinger
Classes: (see list below)

To make up for missing the Saturday class on February 13th, I chose to do six additional
observation hours at Underwood High School, which is a smaller, more rural school than the
schools I have been observing recently (Lewis Central HS and Thomas Jefferson HS). See
attached sign-off sheet.
I observed the following classes on February 1st:
Algebra II (sophomores, juniors and seniors)
Pre-calculus (juniors and seniors)
Programming (mostly juniors and seniors)
Pre-calculus (sophomores, juniors and seniors)
Math Support (freshmen)
Geometry Concepts (sophomores, juniors, seniors)
Classes at Underwood were quite different than the ones at TJ. They were all more traditional.
Students sat at individual desks and worked on problems from the textbook after a brief lecture
from the teacher introducing new material for the day.
Instructional Strategies
All classes that I observed except math support were lecture/note taking followed by students
working on assignments. Each class was started by going over the homework from the previous
day. It seemed to work very well with these students, because students were open about what
they did not understand and asked questions when they were confused. This might be due to
the smaller class sizes, which were almost all under 20 students. Also, the fact that the majority
of students were upper classmen and had elected to take the classes likely contributed to the
high participation rate.

The programming students were beginning a new project with Sphero robots, which are small
robots that can be controlled remotely from a smartphone. To practice controlling them and
experiment with program commands the entire class was the hallway so that the little robots
could move about unimpeded. It was a very self-directed class.
I was very impressed by the maturity and work ethic of all the students I observed. The need for
classroom management by the teacher seemed nearly not existent in the upper level classes.
Students worked diligently and I saw no students playing on their phones or playing games on
their laptops.
The last class I observed of the day however brought me back a little more to reality. Geometry
Concepts is a required math course for all students who do not take Algebra II and Geometry.
The main difference is that Geometry Concepts does not have any proofs, and the pace is
therefore a little slower. This class was a larger class and there was a lot more off-task behavior.
However, there was also more scaffolding in this class--students had math binders with very
specific instructions on how to take notes and how to complete homework.
In hindsight the difference between upper level elective classes and required classes isnt
surprising, but seeing these classes back to back was really interesting.
Communication
Since the classes were all a lecture format, questioning by the instructor was limited to the
beginning of the class, during homework checks and the lecture. After the lecture, students
worked on the assignments, and if they had questions they asked for help. Both teachers I
observed also circulated around the room and looked at students progress on the assignment.
However, since classroom management seemed like less of a concern, the teachers seemed
freer to interact with students on a more personal level, asking about extracurricular activities,
family or other current events. For example, the day I observed was the day of the Iowa caucus,
so some of the class periods ended with an entertaining discussion of politics.
Each class has a Planbook site that is accessible from the schools main website, so students
and parents can see all of the topics and assignments for each week. Grades are also
accessible online.
All in all, I think that communication in this school is more formal than the other schools I have
observed but likely more thorough, simply because it is a very small school in a small
community, and many people know each other outside of school.
Content Knowledge
Both teachers I observed seemed to have a great deal of content knowledge, even when they
themselves were learning the material as they went. For example, this is the first semester the
programming class has been offered, so the teacher is also learning a lot as he goes.

Curricula Design & Implementation

The math classes were redesigned to match the Common Core better. Previously they had the
traditional course sequence of Algebra I, Algebra II, Trigonometry and Calculus, along with
Precalculus, and a General Math. However, to align with the core, two new classes were
created: Algebra Concepts and Geometry Concepts. These are classes that cover all of the
required standards in the Core, but at a slower pace than the traditional classes of Algebra and
Geometry. Trigonometry was also broken up, with parts of it added to Algebra II and parts of it in
Precalculus.
The goal of this reorganization was to include all of the Core requirements in the Algebra and
Geometry sequence, so by the time students get to Precalculus and Calculus, the focus can be
on making sure students have a solid foundation in everything and the courses can be tailored
more closely to the requirements for the AP Exam.
Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to really assess other parts of the Core.
Assessment
All assessment seemed to be of the traditional test or quiz variety. Homework was completed
and graded by the students on a weekly basis, providing a formative assessment. Since the
homework was self-graded, I think that provides the students even more accountability and
more immediate feedback.
Professional and Reflective Practitioner
Both teachers gave me several pieces of advice on classroom management, how they created
their syllabus, and how they paced the material. Clearly both were very comfortable as teachers
and very thoughtful as well. The teacher of the classes for math recovery said she allowed
students to use their phones if they had a good reason,and tried to promote a very comfortable
learning environment, so that students would be more relaxed and able to learn math. She
clearly works to make sure students are given a chance to learn math in a more low-stress
environment, and she has even had students get caught up enough that they could transition
from the fundamentals math classes to the more advanced classes.

Feb 15th Make up Reflection

Lesson Notes and Reflections
In this class lesson templates were discussed. There are a variety of templates, and each
includes slightly different information - some include time span, classroom management
expectations, etc. These lesson plans seem to be a very important thing for new teachers--I
know I have spent a lot of time on my lesson plans for my classes. Writing the lesson out forces
you to think about the goals and the steps of the lesson.

I was surprised to watch the discussion of where my classmates lesson plans came from.
Apparently I inspired some of the others in the class to format their lesson plan like mine, since I
had to present my tech lesson plan a week early.
The school I am working with for my field experience uses lesson plans developed jointly by the
math teachers at the school. They share a common format and include SMART goals and
assessment notes. They are quite detailed, so I have been following this format as well for my
evaluations.
I think that writing out lesson plans is a good practice to prepare for substitute teachers as well. I
have been subbing this past semester, and having a well written lesson plan is always a huge
relief, instead of a couple of notes that are scribbled out. One thing I will try to include in my
lesson plans for subs that has been very helpful to me is a list of helpful students, who you can
count on to help, as well as a list of some of the students that may need to be watched closely.
Social media was also discussed. It is not currently a way for parents to get news from the
school, because they still prefer websites or emails. But students expect it to be used, and it
seems a good part of them are considerate of what they post online. Edmodo may be a good
alternative to traditional sites. Twitter is also popular, but teachers can pull tweets for students to
look at, instead of just letting students browse freely. I think that the use of technology for
communication will only increase.
Other topics around technology included bring-your-own device, flipped classrooms, and open
education textbooks. I feel all of these will become more and more popular. What is really great
is that I do not feel confined to the textbooks in my class--there are so many resources available
that if I feel a particular section is lacking, I can easily find material to supplement it.
I hope that I will get a chance to pilot the flipped-classroom model in one of my classes
someday, especially an upper level one. I think it would be an excellent experience to prepare
students for the type of learning they will be doing at the university level. It would also allow
students to proceed more at their own pace--some students are really held back by the slow
pace, while other students can be left behind with a pace that is too fast for them.
As for current trends, I am very excited about the maker movement and the increasing use of
programming in schools. I believe it is very valuable for these digital natives to be aware of how
their phones and apps function at a deeper level. Programming grants a deeper understanding
of both the benefits and challenges of creating useful applications, and it also can begin to show
students how these things can be exploited and how they can protect themselves.