Heather Johnson

Over all reflection.

For this unit, my partner and taught 3rd graders multiplication and division and how they

relate to one another. In our group, there was 5 students. I had 3 specifically assigned to

me, but we worked with all 5 of the students together. We gave them a pre-assessment,

we taught them 2 lessons and we gave them a post-assessment.

The assessments were there to find out what the students knew when it came to

multiplication and division. We assessed each of these areas. We gave them

multiplication problems as well as division problems and gave them as much time as they

needed to complete these assessments. 3 students in our group showed much

improvement. One student didnt. He was already more advanced than the others in the

group and I dont think we focused on him enough. We did plan extension activities, but

we should have put a little more focus on his pre-assessment to challenge him. Another

student scored very low on the pre-assessment. He struggled throughout the unit. He was

only in class 3 times while we were there and was unable to take the post-assessment. His

lack of attendance could explain some of his struggles in the unit.

One thing that I learned as I taught the unit is that the children need to be taught at their

level and they need to be challenged. When I taught the lesson, I realized 5 minutes into,

the students were not being challenged in my guided practice. Because of that, I let the

students work on the problems by themselves and share tricks that they discovered as

they used manipulatives. As I let the students discover ways to do the math with the

counters, they even taught me a trick. As a teacher, I need to keep them challenged. If I

taught this lesson again, I would have model more with counters, so they would have

been able to use them more as they practiced harder division problems.
 One thing that was challenging while I was teaching this unit, was a student who couldnt

stay focused. In the pre-assessments and the lesson assessments, he would just guess, so

that he would be done. I think that one of the reasons he wanted to finish so fast was

because he saw another student who was done with the tests playing different math

games and he wanted to also. Before we would let him play the games, we would go over

his test with him. This gave us an opportunity to find out where he was really struggling

because his assessments were not accurate because he wasnt trying. This is something I

want to do when I am in my Sr. practicum and student teaching. It was hard to keep him

focused and we had to plan ways to help him learn that were different from the other

students. Another challenge that we had was a student who was more advanced than the

other students. He would finish before everyone else because he knew the curriculum we

were teaching. We had to find different ways to extend his learning beyond that of his

peers.
I have learned a lot about teaching this semester. I have learned that I am going to have

bad lessons and bad days as a teacher were nothing seems to be going right, but I have

learned that I cant just stop when its hard. I have to learn from my mistakes and find

ways to make sure I become a better teacher because of them. I will never really stop

learning how to become better. Every student I will work with will be different and they

can all teach me different things. They wont all need the same things and some may need

to learn in a different way and as their teacher I will have to find the best ways to teach

them. I have really learned that things that are hard teach me the most and I should

recognize that and know that someday I will be grateful for the hard things that were

expected from me during this semester.

 This unit was met to be a learning experience for me and it was. I was able to teach a

group of 5 students and those 5 were different from each other. They each needed

different things to really be able to learn the same concepts we were teaching them. I

didnt figure all of the ways to teach them out and I have learned since the post-

assessment that I didnt focus on some of the students enough. That is way a teacher

needs to look the pre-assessment scores and make sure that they are teaching the child

and not just a math concept. Post-assessments tell a teacher what the students has learned

from the unit. These tests are crucial in teaching to the students needs. Many parts go

into teaching a unit. Its not just a lesson. I can teach all that I know, but if the students

are not learning it, it doesnt matter.