Reflection

What did you learn about childrens mathematical thinking, about teaching, or about yourself?
One of the most important things that I took away from this lesson was there are some
variables of the classroom that I cannot control. Unfortunately, on this particular day, there was a
substitute teacher working with another class who was unclear with dismissal times and let her
students out 10 minutes early. Since my lesson was being instructed in the hallway, I had to try
to manage with students talking loudly next to me while continuing to teach fractions to my own
learners. This was a major hurdle I had to handle during my lesson. The noise level caused
distress and distraction to my students who were trying to understand a difficult subject. What
my Penn Mentor told me was, have a short memory because there will be lessons that flop
and the next day you will have to reteach, but do not let the flop get to you. It was reassuring
that every teacher has those days where variables are not in their favor.
On a positive note, I did notice a difference in my confidence level and in my grasp of the
structure of the number talk. I have the basics down of setting and maintaining norms, sticking to
the format of the talk, and eliciting a variety of strategies. I have also grown in my ability to
represent the students thinking on the board.
Rather than introducing new content, I wanted to think more about how this lesson could
correspond in what the students were already learning in their math class. I made the assumption
this lesson was consistent with what the students were already comfortable with. However, I
quickly realized they were unable to make numerical reasoning sense of why some fractions
were bigger than others or how to represent fractions in a drawing. My intention was for students
to be able to explain how to compare fractions. I quickly realized this lesson was not accessible
for them. I now recognize how difficult it was to modify lessons in the moment.
In the end, I think the students had trouble sharing alternative methods and collaborating.
The students did not demonstrate behavioral issues. Nor did I have management issues with the
students. However, the language to question or collaborate was not there for them. As Hiebert
states, communication makes information and solution methods available. In the future, I want to
focus on the discourse of my classroom to provide a community aspect to math with
collaboration. I believe that students working in a partnership is more productive than working
alone. Rather than only being supported by the available evidence If students are exposed to a
greater variety of methods, they have more likelihood to talk about why these techniques work.
Lindsey recommended this creative lesson from our class, but my execution was not
successful. I think the issue or issues of peer interaction was the biggest challenge for the
students. For myself, the biggest difficulty was managing the environment around us (the chaos
of other students being let out of class early) and keeping my train of thought on track. My own
communication was affected by this.
What I would like to work on in the future is how to ask probing questions to get at
students thinking. Also, to be able to support the students through confusions, instead of "filling
in" for them with my thinking. By encouraging students to share and discuss methods of
solution, they have the chance to clarify their ideas for themselves. (Hiebert, 1997)
In hindsight, I recognize I began filling in students' thinking by asking leading questions and
reinforcing a rule with little explanation, rather than asking students to make their own
connections.
I also realized how carefully I need to consider the tools that I use to enhance my
lesson. My video did not help students as much as I thought it would. I thought the video
provided a visual aid as well as better math vocabulary than I could provide in my lecture.
However, the ideas the passive video provided could have been brought up with discussion and
explained in the students words rather than the videos. As Hiebert says, mistakes are sites for
learning. This applies to the students and myself in learning the best discussion methods.

What questions have emerged from this experience that you would like to explore further?
There were several questions that emerged for me from this experience. I am interested in
learning how to engage discussions in math and give students the space to ask questions and
interact with one another. I also want to further explore scaffolding by using visual aids. I
thought the video would be very helpful for math language and to provide mixing up the
materials normally used in math (worksheets). However, it did not serve as great of a purpose as
I intended.
I also struggled to get the students to collaborate during the partner work experience. I
would further like to explore how to get students to talk to each other more and support each
other. This would include teaching them to utilize each others strategies rather than only
following the strategy I use. I felt like I was lecturing them on how I would compare fractions.
This limits room for their own strategies to be used. I feel like the students were relying on the
teacher-student interaction, while I was hoping for a more student-student discourse. This is a
discourse that I would like to develop more in Terms IV and V.
In the future, I want to use turn and talk more often in the beginning of the lesson to
establish a discourse of communication between students as essential(?). I believe turn and talk
would also comfort the students knowing that they are not the only ones confused or to hear
another strategy that might make more sense to them.

What pedagogical strategies will you continue to work on?

I want to work on my own discourse and be more intentional about the way I
communicate information. I want to learn to embrace uncertainty in myself and my students.
Pedagogical strategies I will work on are ways to encourage more student-to-student
conversation. I will encourage discussion further, rather than only stating what answer they got.
An issue I will address next time is that I did not adequately assess the added-students'
prior knowledge, which I will do much more carefully in the future.
In conclusion, I will think more explicitly about how to facilitate discussions. I will work
on building understanding through tasks that encouraged connection and engagement. Lastly, I
will practice implementing strategies like modeling and scaffolding to create lessons around my
students needs.