Today, I came to MAT 157: Mathematics for Elementary Teachers II prepared. Though, when walking into a classroom with a great teacher, you can only be so prepared because those teachers often surprise you. That is the type of teacher I aspire to be one day.
We learned a new classroom management technique when placing students into groups which involved only a stack of playing cards. You take two-of-a-kind out of the deck to match the number of students present in the room so they may match themselves together. This method takes a little bit of preparation but I appreciate the exposure for when classroom procedures become monotonous. Note to self: Roxanne also warned us that older children will start switching cards, so you must be strategic when handing out the cards. Maybe the beginning of the class as the students walk in.
Our lesson was a slight overview of probability and a strategy to teach it involving goldfish. The snack, not the water creature. A ziploc bag with the colorful goldfish were handed out, all different totals. A general worksheet accompanied the activity that required students to predict probabilities of sample scenarios and then apply those predictions.
Specifically my partner and I received a total of 47 goldfish. 15 yellow, 15 orange, 7 red, and 10 green.
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My partner and I got through the worksheet pretty quickly. She didn't really wait for me. Not like she had to, we are in college, but she never asked for my opinion. When we came the question where we had to use our probabilities to relate to a pond of 300 fish, she saw it easiest to convert to a percentage. That threw me off for a second because that seemed like and extra step that I hadn't thought of. My brain thought that a proportion would fit best for the scenario. If I didn't have confidence in myself a student, this may have thrown me off and caused me to question myself which I slightly did. But I decided to go for it my way anyhow and we came up with almost the same answer. She came up with one less healthy fish in the pond and one more sick fish than I did. She rounded using percentages so it makes sense why our answers were slightly varied.
This moment was very important to me as an educator because even though my partner and I were working the same problem, we had different strategies. That is perfectly okay unless you are testing for mastery of a certain technique which... if they come up with the same answer, they shouldn't necessarily be counted wrong if they can explain their though processes. Every person learns and works differently.
Note to self: This is extremely important to keep in mind to anticipate when are where work in students may vary and how specific you need to be in your directions.
Another note to self: If you don't want students to eat the goldfish, tell them other students have also used these goldfish and put their hands ALLLL over them already :)
This activity was fun, I liked how there were two possible ways of getting the answer. I understand how you felt when your partner just did the worksheet without discussing each question. I like how you did the "note to self" to remind what exactly happened and how you could change this in your classroom.
ReplyDeleteI loved this activity. I just wish we could of eaten them. I like how we each had our own bags and they were all different. It gives the students more than one example and prevent cheating. I also like how it encouraged interacting between other classmates. I think group discussion are great because it allows the teacher time to observe their answers and see what they need help on.
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