Reflection 1 – November 8

Today was my first lesson with the grade 4 classroom. I did a math lesson on adding and subtracting
decimal numbers with regrouping. I was super nervous for this lesson; way more than I should have
been. The lesson went well, all the students engaged with me and with the lesson. I have a feeling this is
just because I am a new teacher and not because my lesson was genuinely engaging. I talked with my TA
after the lesson, and she mentioned I had good pacing and displayed good wait time. I thought this was
funny because I was not thinking about wait time, but instead was taking lots of time to choose what
student I wanted to answer the questions I posed. This was a successful lesson, but I think my next
lessons will be much more difficult as my novelty will be wearing off. One thing I learned from my TA and
I really saw here was that the students are weak. Many of them had trouble even writing the equations
down and were lost trying to do the math. In my next lessons I will have to give them some structure so
the writing of the math is easier. There were also students who tried to do everything without writing
anything down and it just lead to them making frequent mistakes because they are trying to go to fast.

Reflection 2 – November 10

Today was my first lesson that did not go as planned. There was math in the morning today and after the
morning meeting we normally do a wordle or a canuckle. Me and my TA had found the math version
called nerdle that we wanted to try with the kids. We found the solution doing it on Karen’s MacBook
first and planned to do it on the board with the kids. Since we had already done it with the MacBook, we
had to disconnect the computer to use a different one, so the solution wasn’t already there. This is when
we learned that nerdle is banned on the school internet. So, I tried hooking up my personal computer to
the smartboard so we could do it on that, and the smartboard would not recognize my computer at all.
We had to scrap the idea altogether and just get on with the lesson. In this lesson I gave out a check-in
for the kids to do. The check-in was 4 problems, adding and subtracting decimals with and without
regrouping. Looking over the submissions the students did well on average. Some students were still
having trouble and I got to see that, but most were getting it and completing most of the problems error
free. I did notice that there were some shared mistakes between students sitting next to each other, so I
feel some students were cheating and copying off their neighbors. I will have to be more careful of this in
the future.

Reflection 3 – November 20

Today I got to observe a junior high classroom, Grade 7 science then grade 8 math and science. This was
completely different to the grade 4 classroom. The students were much more involved with the learning
in math and science than they were in grade 4. We did an experiment to see how many textbooks 3 eggs
could hold up, writing the weights on the board and calculating the force for each egg. It was a really
cool experiment that had all of the kids engaged. It was a science class but all of the students were also
practicing their math as the unit they are working on is conversions. In the grade 8 class we looked at a
lever on a fulcrum and how mechanical advantage can be created with it. The students stood on the
lever and the 2 twins balanced out each other on an even lever, where when one of the bigger kids came
on we had to move the lever across the fulcrum to give the twin more mechanical advantage. The
formula for these examples is directly related to their unit in math, which was multiplying fractions. The
math class was super interesting as I got to see the same thing happening in my grade 4 classroom
happening in a grade 8 classroom. Many of the weaker students weren’t doing any work while the
stronger students were completing their work then doing their best to help their friends. I will need to
make building a relationship with these students a priority when I’m teaching my own class so that I am
able to help them through the problems without them feeling pressured or anxious or called-out. In my
grade 4 class I know who these students are and I have worked with them to help build there skills to
where they need to be.

Reflection 4 November 22

Today was the start of the new science unit. The students finished off their waste management projects
last class and now we are moving into earth systems. This science unit is very vocab heavy, learning all
the names for the different systems of earths environment. I started the lesson with an introduction
featuring the class pet fluffy, asking what he needs to survive. The students were easy to engage with
and had many questions and ideas about earths systems. I had to spend more time worrying about
classroom management, the students are excited to learn but they can be disruptive to the classroom.

Reflection 5 November 23

Today we went on a nature walk for science. The kids really enjoyed it and got good pictures of the
spheres while we were out on our walk. Classroom management is one of my weaker skills and they
were really put to the test organizing the students for this walk. My TA did a fantastic job helping me set
the expectations for the walk, as the kids are really excited to go out and see things they love to run
ahead of the rest of the class. We set the expectation that they had to stay behind us while we were
walking. There was one point on the walk where we had to cross the road. This took a decent amount of
time because the kids really spread out while we were walking. We had to make sure they all crossed at
the same time, and they were all paying attention while they crossed. This is difficult for some of the
students so it was important we were keeping them safe. The walk was a success and the students got
good exposure to the spheres of the earth.

Reflection 6 November 28

Today was the math test. This has been the first time I was on the other end of testing, it was a really
different experience. I was surprised at how much the kids tried to talk to each other while they were
writing, with all of the students trying to get away with what they could. I had to make sure they were
working independently and not cheating off of their neighbor. The timeslot for meth is over an hour,
while some kids used the whole time many were finished in the first 10-20 minutes of class. Many of the
stronger students finished early, but many of the weaker students also finished really early. I think they
went through as best they could but did not think too hard on many of the questions. One student did
not do a page of the test even when I asked him about not finishing it. Since students were done for so
long after the test they got louder and louder so I had to quiet the room multiple times so the students
still writing could focus on the test. One student did not write anything until the last 10 minutes and
needed encouragement to finish the test in the end. They did manage to finish, and I will be marking the
tests tonight.

Reflection 7 November 29

Today was the first day we utilised the thinking classrooms strategies. We hung up 9 vertical spaces
(white boards) and had the kids’ group into 3s to use them. Students who were the ones writing on the
board were not allowed to contribute ideas, but instead had to listen to their partners. This made sure
that all 3 kids were participating, and if a student was weaker instead of not having a role, they could
participate by being a writer. We used this strategy to accompany the first multiplication lesson where
we covered factors, fact families, prime and composite numbers. The students picked it up quickly and I
am excited to use the vertical spaces again.

Reflection 8 November 30

Today was my second UC visit, and it went rather poorly. I was very anxious today for several reasons and
it really showed in my lesson. I was very choppy with my instruction and did a poor job managing my
classroom. Bad days happen and it is something I will need to build a resilience too. My lesson was on
the atmosphere, and how it impacts the rest of the Earth’s spheres. I chose videos to outline the
important characteristics of the atmosphere, which I think were good. A few of the students were not
paying attention and I should have done more to maintain it. This was a learning experience which I
hope I will benefit from in the long run.

Reflection 9 December 4

This lesson was our first lesson doing multiplication. I wanted to give the students a resource to learn
their multiplication facts. I printed off a 12x12 table for them to fill out, with the divisors on the axes and
the products in the table. The students filled out the tables very quickly because they did each line by
skip counting. The tables will be useful for some students who are struggling with their multiplication
facts as they can reference the table while doing their groupwork instead of getting stuck recalling facts.

Reflection 10 December 5

This lesson was about what factors and multiples are. The lesson went well with students following along
and answering my questions, but the students had trouble when asked to work alone. While the
students understood what multiples were and were very keen on finding them they had much more
trouble with factors. When asked to find factors of a number they first found multiples, then when
corrected had problems starting their search for factors. My next lesson will include tricks to factoring to
get the students back on track.

Reflection 11 December 7

This lesson started by reviewing factors. I gave students strategies to look for factors. I covered that we
should start by looking for the lowest factors 2 and 3, and we can stop looking for factors when we are
looking at numbers bigger than half of our product. I also outlined the factor pairs and if we hit the
second number in a pair then all the factors will be found by finding all the factor pairs. I split the kids
into vertical spaces to check if numbers were prime or composite by finding their factors. Students were
much more successful at finding factors in this lesson as they could use the strategies, I taught them.
This lesson was also my UC visit and they gave the fantastic feedback to have the vertical spaces turned
into a competition by keeping score on the board. I will keep this in mind for my next math lesson.

Reflection 12 December 8

This math class was the first class that I did which involved centers. First I reviewed their retests that
were handed back, going through each question and having the students come up to the board to solve
them. The students were eager to share because they had their tests and were not afraid of putting the
wrong answer on the board. After I reviewed the retest I split the groups off into centers, there was 3
games that they could play then a station where they got to use the iPads to progress on matific. I took a
group of students who needed extra instruction on regrouping, and I found that after doing some
examples even the weakest students were completing problems individually without errors. In this
lesson a student hurt their figure while at their desk, I was at a loss for what to do because of the
reaction they had. My TA took them to the office and got ice for their finger. This student was one who
was working with me, and they were able to participate in the lesson after putting ice on their finger.

Reflection 13 December 11

Today was the day where I reviewed the patterns when multiplying by ten. Since multiplying by 10 just
adds a zero after the number I thought the lesson would go quickly and students would understand it
quickly. With this assumption I planned to review multiplication strategies with the class, so they had
strategies to multiply numbers together instead of just memorizing them. However, the students did not
understand the multiplying by 10 pattern as fast as I was expecting. I spent the time to outline the
concepts until understanding was reached, but I did not get a chance to finish strategies for all the
numbers. Since I spent so long lecturing the student engagement was low at the end of the class.
Teaching both 10x patterns and multiplication strategies up to 12 was too ambitious, I will have to
conclude it in my next class before the intended lesson.

Reflection 14 December 12

This class I finished off the multiplication strategies that I started last class. I taught the strategies and
also had students come up to the board to tell me what strategies they used. One student had an
interesting one for 11 that I figured out but many of the other students did not understand and preferred
a different strategy. Seeing this student share his strategy was interesting and was a strategy I noticed
when I was learning. It was cool to see someone with that way of thinking about numbers. After finishing
I taught how to do 3 digit by 1 digit multiplication with a breaking down strategy and with the standard
algorithm. When the students split into vertical spaces, I put a chart on the smartboard so students
could compete with each other to solve the most questions. This worked very well and the engagement
in the lesson was much higher, and more work was getting completed with the incentive of a
competition. I will be incorporating this in my future lessons.