There are many learning goals that I would like to accomplish throughout this semester. I have always been pretty average when it comes to math and I have always enjoyed it, however I did not always feel safe in the enviroment in which I was learning math. I was always scared to raise my hand and give an answer because I was too scared of being wrong and being made fun of. I want to create an environment much like the one described in the Lester article. I want my classroom environment to allow the students to be curious, question things, explore and most importantly feel respected. I believe that when you create an environment such as this, that all students have a better opportunity to succeed. Another goal that I have is I want to walk away from this class and be able to explain how something is done. For example, I know that 4+4=8, but when a student asks me "why?" I want to be able to provide them with a confident explanation. I am very good at solving math problems, but I have not yet mastered WHY math problems work out. I would also like to walk away from this class knowing different methods and strategies to teach math. I can remember from my own math experience that I didn't always learn math the same way as my classmates and therefore I think that it is important to provide students with different ways to learn math. The most important goal that I would like to learn from this class is how to help my students appreciate math. I do not think that many students appreciate math or think that it is important, and therefore I want to make math fun, and engaging for my students.
I really like your goal to learn how to create a safe learning atmosphere for mathematics. I think that building this type of atmosphere will take a lot of experiences that shape our thinking about our classrooms. Today I had an experience in my field placement that was rather unsettling. I was teaching math to a small group and they were all over the place and behaving rather poorly. I decided to give the students a ticket (an incentive) for good behavior. All of the students in my group were doing what they were supposed to except for one student. I gave tickets to the students who were behaving and the student who was not began to cry when he didn't get a ticket. I explained that he still had another chance and when he corrected his behavior I gave him a ticket and thanked him for following directions. He was still very upset and at the end of the lesson he made a comment about how he did not do well in math. I explained that he did a great job in math (the problem was only with his behavior), but he said "No I didn't." I then pulled him aside and told him that he did a really good job especially with the tough math we were working on.
ReplyDeleteThe point of the story is that a behavioral issue caused a student to feel that he was unsuccessful in math. This is not an atmosphere I want in my future classroom. I'm not sure if the incentives were used at a bad time or if they are not a good choice at all. I hope to learn more about how to avoid situations like this in the future.