Chloé Greene

Module 3 Collaboration Journal

October 7, 2018

Date/Time/Length/Setting
The meeting took place in Amber Manganelli’s office on October 5 at 9:00 AM. The
meeting lasted about 30 minutes. I asked the questions from the Collaboration Journal
assignment, which lead to other valuable discussion.
Educational Partner
The educational partner that I collaborated with for this module was Amber Manganelli.
Amber is the Administrative Assistant (AA) at my school. AAs in Fulton county schools, “assist
school administration in providing effective leadership and guidance in the operations of the
school.” At Hopewell that means Amber works as a part of the administration and leadership
teams, but supports the teachers in providing effective and meaningful instruction.
Collaboration Tools Used
We used email to arrange our meeting, but the actual meeting took place in person.
Content Discussion
Amber referenced our school’s strategic plan when asked about the instructional goals
for our school. Our plan’s biggest focus is on literacy and math. Literacy is a big focus because it
will support increased learning in all subject areas, including math. The goal is to have 85% of
eight graders perform at proficient or distinguished levels in ELA and Math on the Georgia
Milestones assessment.
In literacy, Amber sees a need for improvement in students’ reading stamina. Teachers
need to support students by providing time in class to read and setting expectations for students
to be reading outside of the classroom. Students also need support in finding “Just Right” books
to increase their stamina. In math, Amber sees that students need support in basic computations
and fractions. These are skills that students should come into middle school already knowing,
however many still struggle with this. Amber discussed how though these skills and standard
algorithms are important, teachers should stop letting that be the reason that students are not
mastering grade-level skills. Giving students calculators and teaching them how to accurately
use them would be more effective than trying to teach them skills that they’ve had to practice
for 3 or more years, yet still have not yet mastered.
Decisions Made
Meeting with Amber lead me to the decision to not include activities to develop math
fluency and numeracy into my instructional lesson plan. After talking with Amber, I see that
teaching students to accurately use a calculator will be more beneficial.
As a 6th grade math teacher, I see how not knowing how to fluently add, subtract,
multiply, and divide, can keep students from mastering new schools that require the ability to
perform these basic functions. Now I can also see the power of teaching students to use a
calculator to overcome these barriers. While having this conversation with Amber I was
reminded of my elementary years when our teachers taught the standard algorithm and we
practiced that method until it was mastered. Even though we moaned and groaned as
students, we mastered the skill and saw the real-world connection because our teachers always
preached that, “You won’t have a calculator with you everywhere you go.” This isn’t the case
for the generations that we are teaching now. Now, it is more realistic to teach students to use a
calculator because it is more likely that we will have access to a calculator than we will a pen
and paper.
For my instructional plan I will not include activities to have students practice basic
functions with decimals, as I had planned. Instead, I will develop activities to support the
learning of using a calculator.