Today got off to a good start. Morning meeting was fun. We had a brief reading time because a group of local firefighters visited and spoke with us about fire prevention and safety. I taught my first "official" TPA lesson and I felt like the kids actually "got it." I ensured that they each had at least three things written down before I started the lesson, and then moved them through the process of rating their topics. The topic got one star for each of the following:
-Do I enjoy it?
-Could I teach someone about it?
-Do I know a lot about it without doing extra research?
Kids that had topics that tied with three stars came up to me multiple times. I stopped the group and did a little deviating from the lesson plan. I said, "Which topic makes you excited? If I asked you about the topic you chose, you should be able to talk and talk and tell me all about it." I saw eyes light up- my favorite part of teaching! Tomorrow, we'll have more time to finish our brainstorming and writing as much as we can about our chosen topic. I hope to also introduce several types of graphic organizers to help them sort their vast knowledge!
After recess and lunch, we had a short amount of quiet time- kids working quietly on their own, resting their brains, drawing, etc. I found out that morning that I'd be teaching math that day, and my assumption was that we would be teaching problem solving situations. On Monday, we did a problem where there were three kinds of cake and three kinds of ice cream in a cafeteria and students were asked to come up with the possible combinations. Today, however, we upped the ante with a problem about the possible number of firefighters in three types of firetrucks. The problems started because although I had been given the teacher guide on the problem, I only briefly skimmed it before it was time to teach. What I didn't realize is that the students would be given a worksheet that detailed the problem. I knew what the set-up was, but I had no idea what the end goal or product would be. Sounds like creative, divergent teaching, yeah? Absolutely not. The kids were frustrated, I was trying to solve the problem while I was teaching, and I was afraid to show them too many strategies. What we were doing was allowing kids to come up with their own strategies, even if they arrived at the wrong conclusion. For fear of doing this again, I only brought them so far with the problem. Had I worked it out ahead of time, I would have known that this time they would have really benefitted from knowing a good starting place or at least what their ending place should be.
Though I was incredibly frustrated with myself as a teacher at the end of the lesson, I sat the kids down. I asked them to rate, fist to five, how they felt about this math time, fist being awful, five being the best. Half the class was fists or ones, and the other have was fours or fives. I am used to a couple kids saying things are awful, but never this many. I admitted to them that I felt like I didn't do my best teaching today. I said that it is hard for me to teach this kind of math and that I should have had a better plan coming into it. I apologized to them for not making things clearer and shared with them that teachers make mistakes, too. I plan on re-teaching it tomorrow. I always give my kids second chances, so I hope they'll do the same for me.
Love,
Ms. T
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