Reflection

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Day 1: Introduction and Classroom management
I think what I most fear most about classroom management is dealing with the cliques that girls form. As a guy, I dont really know how to identify them. These groups can be a major obsticle to creating a positive learning environment, as they are very exclusive in nature. It will be an important part of my job to identify these groups and make sure they are not disruptive, at least inside my classroom.

**Robin:** Greg - I was wondering where this idea came from - I never would have considered it. It is important to at least think where you might have come up with this theory. I have rarely observed this kind of behaviour in the classroom BUT it is easily addressed by have a seating plan determined by you. BTW - Thanks for being the first student to create a Wiki! Its an idea I heard a few people mention, which made me think back to some of my sisters experiences in elementary school. She had a lot of problems with some of the other grils in her class and I don't want any of my students to go through similar experiences.

Alfie Kohn
I found the videos we watched on Alfie Kohn to be quite interesting. We also saw a video of him in physics methods, in which a lot of the same ideas addressed in our class were expanded upon. I found it very interesting because most of his ideas are quite contrary to accepted conventions, and yet make a whole lot of sense. It should be our goals as teachers to make our students excited about the subjects we teach for the sake of the subject itself, at least thats always been my goal. I am very passionate about science, particularily physics, and it is something I want to share with my students. It never occured to me that things like competition actually take away from students intrinsic desire to learn. It makes sense though that if you make it about winning, it will be less about the learning. It is my hope to learn more about these theories, and alternative methods for motivating my students that will build their intrinsic motivation instead of retract from it.

Punishment
I found the discussion about punishment to be very interesting. In particular I found the performance and associated story and discussion to be very enlightening. This idea that punishment might not be the best way to handle classroom management is something that has been discussed in my other classes, particularly physics methods. Punishment seems like a band-aid solution to me, a reaction to what has happened, rather than a proactive measure. If people keep cutting themselves over and over and over again, you don't just keep applying band-aids, you take away the knife. I am starting to see how, as a teacher, you can identify the warning signs of a problem before there is a problem. That being said, things can still happen, and I don't think you can ever completely remove the need for punishment. As hard as you try, things can still happen that require a strong punitive reaction, especially if the health and safety of the students in your class is at risk. If a student brings a weapon to class, you have to act, and be prepared to act, to protect your students.

Relevance of Material
Something I think can be very effective in selling topics that don't have any direct applications to real life situations is to try and make your lesson interesting. You might not be able to show your students how this relates to their lives, but if they find the lesson to be enjoyable, I doubt they will really care all that much. Of course, how you make order of operations interesting is an entirely different issue, and it might be a lot easier said than done. I suppose another strategy would be to space these topics out as much as is feasible. If lessons without direct applications to the students lives are few, and far between, they might fly under the radar because the students are used to their lessons being relevant. I have no experience to back up this thought, and I could be completely off base, its just a thought. I think it is just important to make things relevant to the students as much as possible, so that they will view the class as having value.

Day 4
What do you do when in your heart you know that the math concept you are going to teach is not relevant or important to your students? I think your best option is to be honest with your students about it. Explain to them that they might not see the value now, but they might need it someday, and you HAVE to teach it so just bare with you. It would also help to make the lesson interesting. It might not be important, but if the way you teach it keeps their attention. It is also probably a good idea to keep these lessons as few and as far between as possible.

What strategies work for me, and which ones would I hesitate to use? I like Fermi problems and visual organizers a lot. I think they are good ways to teach material. Fermi problems promote unique thinking, and creativity, which is always a good thing. I like visual organizers because they have the student think about a term themselves, and what it means, rather then just look up a definition and take it for what it is. I would hesitate to use the mathematics & story strategy, especially in senior math classes. I see the value of using it to break up a lesson, but at the same time I think its kind of silly. I know if a teacher had read a story to us in grade 11 or 12, I would have had a hard time taking that teacher seriously.

What would you do with your ipod
I can think of a few strategies you can use that involve ipods. Pod casts are one obvious idea. You can do pod casts of your lesson, or even pod casts with some extra information to help students having issues. Another idea is to have students do pod casts of a topic themselves, and share them with their classmates. This gives students the opportunity to teach, as well as build a community of learning. There might even be some iphone/ipod touch apps that could be useful (I dont have one so I can't be sure), but that would of course be restricted to students that had an iphone or touch.

Geometers Sketch pad/Tinker plots.
I think these are potentially very useful tools in the classroom. The trick with these tools is setting up a lesson you can do in the computer lab, that makes use of activities that involve these programs. Some of the programs we played with in class would be difficult to turn into a whole lesson that you would want to do in a computer lab. Others, such as the quadrilaterals applet could be very useful. I also think Tinker plots would be very useful if you take the time to find to set up activities with interesting data.

Placement Reflections
**Redoing work** Near the end of my placement, the students had a line graph to do that my AT wanted me to collect and mark. There were a lot of mistakes made on a lot of the graphs, so I handed them back and with the blessing of my AT told them they could redo the graph and hand it into me the next day. My AT told me not to expect very many because she had frequently given this class opportunities to redo work, and it was very rare for anyone to take the opportunity. However, I was very pleased to find that a lot of the students DID take the chance to redo the graph, even if they had gotten an 8. My AT was surprised, as was I, I’m not sure what caused so many of them to redo the graph, but I like to assume it was something about my style that made them want to succeed.

There was one day near the beginning of my placement, when the students had a Science lab due, and when the time came to hand it in, a lot of them did not have it done. My ATs reaction to this surprised me greatly. She spent about 5 minutes yelling at them about responsibility, and that this won’t fly in high school. I couldn’t believe it. My AT was a bit more authoritarian then I would like to be as a teacher, but I thought this reaction went way too far. I guess she had been having a lot of issues with students completing work on time, but I was still incredibly surprised by the way she handled this. I think it was unfair to both students who didn’t and students who did, get it done, and it made the lesson I had to teach immediately after more difficult because the students were shaken.
 * I was surprised by my ATs reaction to late work**

Overall my practicum was fabulous. The kids were great, my AT was amazing, and not to toot my own horn, but I think I did a darn good job as well. I learned so much about what kind of teacher I am, as well as what kind of teacher I want to be. I learned that students can do things as fast as an adult with an undergraduate physics degree. It seems obvious, but I think it's something we all need to be reminded of sometimes. I need to work on differentiating my lesson plans for various students needs. I'm sure it is something I will get better at with practice, but it is a weakness I need to be aware of.
 * Overall practicum reflections **

Student Lesson Plans
I can not believe the amazing ideas that have come out of these student lesson plans. Almost every group had at least one idea that I never would have thought of. Most of the ideas I got are fairly general too, and can be applied to a wide variety of topics, not just in the context in which they were presented. It was also nice to see that many of us seem to have the same weaknesses in our lesson planning. I don't mean this as an insult to the class, just that its nice to see that we are all still learning, and that some of the things I struggle with, other students are struggling with as well (for example making lesson plans that are too long). It was also nice to see the wide variety of different home activities, both optional and otherwise that our class was able to come up with. Creating homework that is valuable and interesting is a difficult task for new teachers. I know I didn't assign homework in my placement unless my AT told me too, because I found it challenging to create activities that would be valuable for the students. Having this bank of possible activities I can adapt to a variety of topics is helpful.