I am extremely excited that I am now easily able to identify the different types of word problems. It still takes me a little bit of time to identify the problem, but I understand what problem type it is. I am also excited because I know that later we will be learning how to help the students understand math. I have always been pretty good at math, but I am just now realizing that I never really understood it. I got almost all A's in math, but remember very little. Like Dr. Shih says, I do not really remember math because I do not have many stems to tie it to.
I taught a math lesson on line plots on Thursday and it was pretty much a disaster. I thought after creating and reviewing the lesson that I had a pretty good idea on how to teach line plots to my practicum students. I was quite wrong. I stumbled on how to explain the line plots to the students and I stumbled when explaining the types of information that could be shown with line plots. I think the main reason I struggled is because I didn't really understand line plots myself. I get the concept and could easily figure out how to do one, but I don't really, really understand them. Because of this I don't think I was able to logically explain line plots to the students. I am going to observe my mentor teacher teach a lesson on graphs, so hopefully that will help me in some way.
To leave the blog on a positive note, I really enjoyed learning how Dr. Shih differentiated his instruction by giving his students the same math problems, but different numbers. I think the traditional mindset on differentiation has been that students at different levels need to have different assignments in which they are learning different things. Dr. Shih showed that the students do not necessarily need to be learning different concepts, they just need to be easier for certain students to understand. This is wonderful because all of the students are learning the same concepts and the lower level students are not falling farther behind!
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