I have not compiled enough evidence yet, with today being January 21. I should be collecting attendance records regularly, and noting trends whenever I see them. I have not reached out to other teachers at SLA, so this is also something I must do. I did have a discussion with students who missed the introductory lesson on parametric equations, which would prove to be essential on the benchmark project. Three of the four students in that group missed the intro lesson on parametric equations! No wonder their group struggled so much when it came time to find these equations and use them. I can remember only one student out of the four coming to see me for extra help, which is disappointing. I could have done more to encourage students to come in for extra help to make up the material they missed, which again would prove essential for the benchmark project.
I will make sure to record the grade that this one group in particular gets on the benchmark, but am unsure how much or what kind of analysis to do on their numbers. I would like to compare them to the average score of students who were present for that lesson. On January 12th in D Band, which is an Algebra 2 class, we gave students the opportunity to choose their own path. They could either work amongst themselves on the project, or come to where I was teaching on one side of the classroom and re-learn the procedure for solving 3-variable systems of linear equations. I taught this lesson to 4 total students. What was frustrating was that a student who did not attend this mini-lesson began our meeting by asking me what the first steps would be to solve for a quadratic equation given a few points. This was the exact topic I taught as a mini-lesson, and this student was asking me to reteach it to them after not attending the mini-lesson which was designed specifically to address this topic. I was speechless when this student asked me to reteach them a part of my mini-lesson. I certainly did not feel like doing that entire lesson over again. That would have made no sense. What I ended up doing was helping them find the equation of a quadratic given 2 points, one being the vertex and the other being a different point. My mini-lesson involved the more rigorous task of finding an equation of a quadratic given 3 points, so I felt the easier 2-point version would be suitable to teach. I am including this anecdote in this journal entry because this student who did not attend my mini-lesson was what I am calling ‘mentally absent’ during class, and may not have heard the directions that the class was to be split up into two sections – group work or a short lesson taught by me. It was frustrating to hear them ask me to teach that lesson to him on quadratics. I did not want to take the time to help them out. This entire situation makes me remember advice Sarah gave me, which is that some students may tune in and out, and should be able to look around the room and see the material they have missed. Similarly, another student had her head down on her desk while important information on the project was covered, and she appeared to be sleeping (eyes closed, mouth open). Another student was embracing the sleeping student’s head as she slept, so this made me uncomfortable enough to not approach either of them although I should have. Later on, this young lady expressed frustration over not knowing what was going on with her math. I had very little sympathy, and did not really put forth much effort to help this student during the rest of our class. I am currently in the process of making a survey for students to answer, and we are handing out a survey for students to answer which will cover questions such as what worked, what didn’t, etc.
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I am beginning to work on my master’s thesis for Penn this Spring, and the inquiry question I am contemplating using for the purposes of my teacher research is presently ‘what strategies or practices do teachers use to assist students who have either missed significant time in school, or have significant gaps in content knowledge, and what are the advantages/disadvantages to these strategies employed by teachers.’ I am currently in the beginning stages of gathering data and evidence.
I want to know how I can best help students when they either miss significant periods of time in school or when they have significant gaps in content knowledge. I am considering editing my inquiry question to be, ‘‘what strategies or practices do teachers use to assist students who have missed significant time in school, and what are the advantages/disadvantages to these strategies.’ This version does not even mention the ‘gaps in content knowledge’ dimension, which I fear will be too nebulous to cover for the purposes of this project. I believe I will ultimately have to decide whether to consider ‘gaps in content knowledge’ or ‘absences’ for my teacher inquiry project. Presently, I am thinking that absences will be a less-daunting topic to cover. My Penn mentor, Sarah, was extremely helpful in a one-on-one meeting today, where she pointed out examples of what I might be able to use as evidence in my project. It was incredibly helpful to hear what evidence might look like, because I was having trouble imagining examples of evidence that I could use. Sarah made this look easy today, which has had a relieving effect on me. Now, I am on the lookout for more evidence, whereas before our meeting, I was not. She was able to point out numerous examples of evidence that are at my disposal just from my D band algebra 2 class this morning (this class will be referred to as ‘D band’ hereafter in this journal entry). Sarah observed D band this morning, where only a third of the class showed up on time. This is atypical for the school where I student teach, and to make matters worse, today was an extremely important day for students to be present. We have a benchmark projects coming up later this week, and the content we covered today (parametric equations) is necessary for this important project! To make matters worse, before today’s class (occurred January 10th 2018), D band had only met once since December 20th, 2017. Two consecutive snow days during the week we returned from holiday break caused us to miss 2 of the 3 total days allotted for school that week. We were also hampered seeing D band due to an early dismissal the week following the consecutive snow days. It has been a challenge to manage these breaks from school, as now our Algebra 2 classes are not in sync. How do we as teachers handle this? I feel pressure to move quickly through material now with D band, because they are a day or two behind A band. |
Alex KoroljowStudent teacher at SLA @ Center City, Philadelphia. Archives
January 2018
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