Blog Week 3

This week teaching math turned out to be very interesting. I initially had a lesson planned that required the students to read directions and look around the room to divide objects in half. The lesson turned out to be far too abstract, so I changed my lesson to include the foam blocks that demonstrate halve's and whole's. These blocks helped the students (infant 1 and 2 especially) see physically that two halve's come together to make a whole. This activity alone taught me a tremendous amount about the way students think. Especially as student's are young, it is easier for them to stay in the "real world" essentially by using manipulatives that can make their learning concrete. I underestimated how abstract my lesson was and how much I was asking of the students. What I really needed to do was bring my lesson back down to a more literal and concrete lesson. As the students got older, I was able to make my lessons more and more abstract over time. I eventually moved from the foam blocks to the circular fraction pieces and we could discuss equalities between fractions. After using the fraction pieces, students were then able to transfer their knowledge into solving word problems and using the pieces to see how the word problems would be solved.

I was surprised, but not very surprised, at how distracted the students were with the foam blocks and it made me begin to understand why teachers may have a hard time allowing students to use manipulatives. Although I gave time for the students to play with the blocks and use them to build, it was still difficult reigning them back in to begin focusing on the lesson. I had to set a clear standard that after our play time with the blocks was up, that we would no longer be using them to build. Although this worked for most students, there were some who seemed almost impossible to stop from reaching and playing with the blocks the entire time, which influenced other students to do that as well. Of course, this problem got better the older the students got and they were eventually not distracted by the manipulatives. I understand that the problem stems from the students not getting to use these types of manipulatives in school, so it was interesting to see how if not used properly with the correct standards set as an expectation.

This week's experiences really helped inform my teaching practices because it was an amazing opportunity to see how to adjust a lesson if you're students are not understanding it at all. It helped me realize how more concrete I need to be with my lessons when the children are younger and how to slowly build up to more abstract lessons as the children get older. It also taught me a lot about initial assessment and assessing the students before you begin with your lesson. If I had assessed the students knowledge about fractions before I began, I would have seen that they did not yet have a grasp on whole and halve's and could have adjusted my lesson earlier.

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