Part I:
For next week, I want to focus on "Content Knowledge" since I will be teaching matrices and I have never taught that concept before. I am currently working on the practice problems that students will be working on for matrices. Afterwards, I will need to plan out the lessons to figure out the target concepts that I want to cover.
Part II
James's personality really stood out for me. James has an interest in social justice and immigration reform, and he even does ESL tutoring at the library on Saturdays. James seems to be the kind of person who is very passionate about helping the people his community, especially, helping out the underdogs, and I can definitely understand the importance of lending out a hand to the people around us. My first teaching job was working with Sooner Upward Bound as a pre-calculus teacher assistant. That job gave me the opportunity to help out students from urban schools. Working with students made me realize some of the struggles that some students go through but it also made me realize the skills (i.e., tutoring mathematics) that I have could help out these students. As much as I love learning mathematics, I love giving mathematics more than anything in the world.
James's personality really stood out for me. James has an interest in social justice and immigration reform, and he even does ESL tutoring at the library on Saturdays. James seems to be the kind of person who is very passionate about helping the people his community, especially, helping out the underdogs, and I can definitely understand the importance of lending out a hand to the people around us. My first teaching job was working with Sooner Upward Bound as a pre-calculus teacher assistant. That job gave me the opportunity to help out students from urban schools. Working with students made me realize some of the struggles that some students go through but it also made me realize the skills (i.e., tutoring mathematics) that I have could help out these students. As much as I love learning mathematics, I love giving mathematics more than anything in the world.
James mentions about how Eduardo (a person he tutors) who is taken advantage of because he is an illegal immigrant. This part in the book really hit home for me because I remember the stories that my mother would tell me during the days when she was in the process of getting a citizenship, so she only had a green card which still made it hard for her to find a good job. My mother worked in a jeans factory where sometimes her salaries were cut even lower (even though they were barely paying her already) for the same amount of work she always did. In today society, I don't think much has changed. If there are ways to cut corners, then there are going to people who will take advantage of that.
This book deals with similar social issues as "Hidden Figures." For instance, the boy who tries to buy a Victrola could not get a receipt because he was African American. In Hidden Figures, a lot of Katherine Johnson's work was not recognized because her name was removed when her work was published. Katherine faced even harder discrimination because she was not only African American but she is also a woman.
Hi Jen,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you got to have the experience of grading what you were able to teacher. What a great experience! A couple of questions for you to think about: 1. How did students respond to the grades and comments you left for them on their exams? And 2., you mentioned that you wanted to start asking yourself what you want you students to understand and be able to do by the end of the unit, so how will you measure this and how will you know that students learned what you wanted them to learn?
1) After the students got a chance to look back at their exams, a lot of the students saw that they just made silly mistakes or they forgot that they could use a method to help solve the problem. Many of the students asked if they could redo their exams, and Julie has created an opportunity for them to make corrections.
Delete2) This is a tough question because I am still work on this one. I think making sure my post-assessment reflects on the what the students had learned and seeing if students are able to use the technique we used during in class is one way to evaluate their learning.
Jenn, I know we are going to get SO tried of grading, but isn't it so much fun right now? I was wondering, what kind of grading scale does your cooperating teacher use? You mentioned that you give some sort of partial credit and that you tried to focus on what you taught them to do rather than what they should already know, but I was wondering if this is explicitly implemented into the grading guidelines. If not, how do you ensure that all of the students are graded fairly? What would you keep about this grading system and what would you change for your own classroom?
ReplyDeleteMy co-teacher uses a standards based grading system (but labels it using 100, 90, 80, 70, 60, and 50 so that parents and students aren't confused). For example, a 90 means that the student attempted all required problems and exhibits content understanding with small errors that do detract from concepts. Some categories (like 80) have a points system that is attached to a rubric that the students have access to. Like 80 P1 (point 1) is for students who attempted the problems with mostly correct answers, but didn't have evidence (show work) of understanding. Her rubric does a much better job of explaining all of the tiers. If you want, I can take a picture of it and send it to you for reference.
Anyway, have a good week Jen and I am excited to have you back in class on Tuesday!
That is so awesome that you have a chance to use a standards based grading system, I would love to move to this type of grading system when I teach my own classroom. Julie grades using a rubric grading system so students' answers need to show a certain criteria in order to receive points but they can also be deducted points for small errors. I believe this is how I think most math teachers grade free response questions.
DeleteI actually have a grading question too! My teacher's tests normally have a few multiple choice questions and then the rest are short answer and for those she gives partial credit. I've been helping her grade the last couple of tests, but only the multiple choice parts. For the last set of tests she explained how she gave partial credit on each of the questions and then asked me if I wanted to try to grade it. I said no because I was worried about consistency, especially comparing to how she may grade differently than I would. Did you have to ask your teacher a lot to make sure you were staying consistent with her grading, or was it more trial by error? I can see how after grading one set of tests makes the rest easier, but I guess I'm just worried about matching my teacher's grading style as well.
ReplyDeleteJulie does a point system for free response questions. If Julie gives me something to grade, then she makes sure than she also creates a grading rubric so that I know what criteria I am looking for when I am grading a student's exam. The rubric does make it easier for me to grade but I still run into weird situations when I am grading. In the beginning, if I got stuck on grading and didn't know how much to take off I would set them in a separate pile to ask Julie later and keep grading. Over time, I gotten a sense of what Julie would take off and how much. So I would recommend to keep that line of communication with your coteacher; it may seem like you're bothering them constantly but in the long run you will get better at sensing how to score questions and then be able to help your coteacher more often (which is good for them).
DeleteJust a reminder, this only needs to be posted on Canvas. :)
ReplyDeleteJenn, I hope your trip to Houston went well. I was wondering what, if anything, you were able to do while you were gone to stay in touch with your students/cooperating teacher. I also was wondering what your plan is for when you start back in the classroom - I know when I was sick I felt like I was pretty far behind, even though I was in contact with my teacher. It took me a day or two to get fully caught up on what the students had learned and done on their projects. What are some things we can do to make the transition easier when we come back to school after being gone a few days?
ReplyDeleteAfter coming back from my trip I was really rusty, my best advice is to take that first day back to analyze what's going on in the classroom and catch up. As for the next day, (this is something I don't necessary recommend but its worked for me) I jumped into to teaching like I was doing right before I left. Before I left I was consistently teaching 1 to 2 class periods a day, so I ask Julie to schedule me to do that again. However, I ended accidentally offering to teach for 3 periods (BC Calculus, AEGIS 3, & AEGIS 4)....I will talk about this more in my next blog. Nonetheless, teaching those 3 classroom periods helped me a lot to getting back in the classroom. So I would say after you take a day to get situated, the next day just jump right back in full speed!
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