Adventures in Ms. Lee's Classroom

In the classroom, I knew there was the typical homework, quizzes, and tests that teachers would have you study the right material in homework and in class discussions to do well on. But I wasn't very aware that there were different types of assessments and different ways to look at what an assessment looks like. There's the formative assessments, summative assessments, and the informal assessments. I've noticed that the students have many formative assessments from the daily homework assignments to in-class quizzes and examples that students are able to work on either in a group or individually. The students are able to discuss their homework and in-class examples with each other, but the quizzes are not to be discussed amongst them until the period is over or given permission by Ms. Resourceful. The summative assessments are the chapter tests that the students do as well as the cumulative. The chapter tests occur once every 2-3 weeks or so, whereas the cumulative tests o...

Teaching a class is one thing, but what are your students doing while you teach? In this post, we look at several recorded times on the first day back from fall break, where students were observed as being either on-task or off-task. 9:50 10:12 10:20 10:35 On-Task 15 23 25 18 Off-Task 10 2 0 7 The class head count was 25 students in the class on this day. It may be from having a long weekend, but only 15 students had started their warmups at the beginning of class, which is only 60% of the class. Initially, it took about 5 minutes for each student to be prepared to work on their warmups at the start of class. At 10:20, 100% of the class was working in their groups on how to prove that two lines are parallel when there was a transversal present. At the beginning of class, only 60% of students were on task as the other 40% were talking to their neighbors about their 4 day weekend. In this class time, there were students that listened attentively a...

In the classroom, I've noticed that there are the jock, popular, and other student cliques established amongst the students. Most students know each other and have a positive relationship with each other, but I've noticed a few students would like to be by themselves because of going into other areas of conversation rather than talking about math or how to go about solving a problem. Despite the different cliques about the classroom, there are some students that show they care about how others are doing, and others that don't make it known that they care about the other students in their group. The students are very respectful of Ms. Resourceful in the classroom. It is evident that the students care for her in a professional matter, and that she cares and respects the students in a professional matter. I've seen the students communicate politely with Ms. Resourceful and she had given responses back to the students in the same manner. There are basic classroom nor...

This week in the classroom, I had to take notice what Ms. Resourceful does as well as what the students do in the 50 minutes of class time. As class time goes on, I notice how much time is spent on reviewing homework or answering questions during a lecture. You can find the schedule in this link: Use of Class Time The day before this particular day, Ms. Resourceful had a substitute teacher take over the class while she had some things to do. So, this particular day was mainly for review before the test just to see where the students struggled and where they excelled in this topic. Before the class starts, Ms. Resourceful set up the available technology per her students' needs while students are entering the classroom and taking their seats. When class starts, Ms. Resourceful starts class by asking if there are any problems on the homework that the students have. I think going over a problem or two would help some students understand what is going on, but it hinders other student...

I am currently working on my practicum in a 9th grade differential geometry course. The curriculum used currently is the Common Core, but will be switching to CPM within the next year. This is a sample classroom that I am working with this semester, since there are multiple classrooms that Ms. Resourceful is in. As you can see, the students are put into pods that contain individual desks, where they are all able to collaborate with one another and do group work together. There are two teacher desks in this room. One teacher desk is located at the back of the room in the right corner and the other is located in the front right corner of the room in order to have the lecture part of the class period/block. In the front of the classroom, there is a whiteboard that is extended almost to either end of the wall, posters on the sides of the whiteboard, an overhead screen in front of the whiteboard, a filing system to turn in homework or have handouts available, and an outlet for techno...