Debbie Hernandez

9/25/2014
MIAA 320
Demonstration of Advanced Practice
Reflection
In order to follow the four-phase process for implementing essential questions, I
decided to present the essential question for our next lesson before developing the
concept with the students. I was not surprised by the students responding with blank
looks and by telling me that they had no idea. Place value is typically an area that
students are weak in and my 4th graders had been struggling with the lessons surrounding
this topic for several weeks.
As we worked through the concept development part of the lesson, though, I felt
that they were being successful in understanding how to add or subtract 1,000 or 10,000
or 100,000 by using place value and not having to write down an addition or subtraction
problem.
But when I returned to the essential question after the lesson, I found that most
students had great difficulty in articulating what they were doing. I found that I had to
drop the level of questions back down to procedural level and help them build their
understanding step by step to help them connect what they were doing to why it worked.
Many of my questions became ones to help them clarify their thoughts. Even though we
had been using the vocabulary of standard form, value, etc. for several weeks, it was
evident that being able to use them meaningfully was still difficult for many students.
Some things I think are going well. We have a classroom culture of listening
attentively and showing mutual respect. No one is expected to be perfect and making
mistakes is expected. We have established signals for showing agreement and approval.

I think that having them respond together as a class and asking them to repeat what
someone else said is effective. Also having other students help clarify what they think
someone else is trying to say is positive.
As I listened to the recording I noticed that instead of it being a class discussion, it
was more of a dialog between me and whichever student was answering. We are
obviously in the beginning stages of learning how to have discourse. Both the students
and I will need lots more practice so that more of the discussion is student-led and driven
rather than propelled by the teacher.
In order to achieve that, I plan to continue to propose the big idea before
teaching the lessons and then returning to it at the end. That will help me pose lower level
questions to them as we go that will hopefully be the building blocks to understanding the
overall concept being taught. Although it will be tempting to skip these conversations,
because they are rather painful, I think the time and effort will eventually pay off.