Martia Williams

Service Learning Project

Phase 1: Investigation
● NC Report Card Information
○ CCMS scored below the county and the state for math, science, and language arts
performance
○ A lower percentage of students are proficient in math and language arts when
entering CCMS than across the state.
○ A higher percentage of students are considered economically disadvantaged at
CCMS than across the state.
○ CCMS has higher rates of criminal acts and bullying than across the county
○ CCMS has a higher rate of in-school suspensions than the county and the state
○ CCMS’s English learner progress is also lower than the county and the state
● Potential Needs
○ More access to technology
■ Not really feasible without the ability to write grants
○ Group Assignments
■ Ask my teacher about crucial units for group projects
○ Reach students who are falling behind
■ Survey for students
● How the needs were discovered
○ My coordinating teacher discussed these needs with me in my teacher interview
● The one need that I will address is group assignments for a few units that my teacher
feels are most important.

Phase 2: Planning and Preparation

● Create group assignments for certain units specified by coordinating teacher
○ Service to teacher and classroom environment - allows students to work together
and have more options for learning
○ Student Learning Goals
i. Help students who are falling behind to have another opportunity to
express knowledge in the classroom
ii. Provide students with another outlet for learning
○ Personal Learning Goals
i. Understand some basics of lesson planning
ii. Deeper understanding and application of task selection
○ Action Plan
i. Discuss with teacher crucial units for group work
ii. Plan out group projects
iii. Check with instructor for the time frame for when to use group projects
iv. Implement project
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v. Gain feedback from students

vi. Develop presentation
● There should be no administrative issues since it only affects my teacher's classroom
Phase 3: Action
● I created Math Talk Conversation Starters cards to help students in the classroom learn
how to communicate in pairs about the math problems that they are working on. My
coordinating teacher then gave students practice problems to work on in order to practice
using the conversation starters with their peers.
● Originally, I was going to plan group assignments for them but the idea that my teacher
wanted to do with those group projects was not really a service-learning project. So we
had to brainstorm and my teacher was able to come up with the Math Talk Conversation
Starters idea. Another issue was getting students to participate. I worked one-on-one with
a few students who were not working well with the assignment so it was difficult for me
to truly observe how well the students were doing as a whole. Although this was a
challenge, my coordinating teacher was able to see where different students were using
the math talk conversation cards and actually benefited from them.
● The students benefited from my service-learning project because the conversation cards
taught them how to explain themselves and understand others better when having
conversations with their classmates. My teacher benefited from my service-learning
project because I taught them something that they needed to understand without putting
more work on her. As well, the conversation cards are now taped to the desks of students
so that they can use them throughout the remainder of the school year. I also benefited
from the service-learning project because I got the opportunity to lead an activity in the
classroom and observe the student’s responses to my activity.

Phase 4: Reflection
● Top Five Lessons Learned (For each lesson, use specific examples to thoroughly describe
how the lesson was learned.)
○ 1. I learned that facilitation is crucial in the practical exploration of an exercise
with students. For example, in my service-learning project, I had students use
math conversation cards to discuss with their neighbors about the answers they
got in their problem-solving process. Unfortunately, I spent the time working with
individual students who were not working on the assignment therefore the
majority of the students did not use my math conversation cards as planned. I
realized afterward that it would have been helpful if I was monitoring the students
and reminding them to use the conversation cards throughout the exercise.
○ 2. I learned that students will destroy anything if not kept in place. When I created
the math conversation cards, I taped them down to the desks. But only a week
later when I came back to see many of the cards ripped in half and no longer
useful for instruction. It would have been useful to laminate the cards before
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taping them to the desks to make sure that they would remain in place and could
be used for the remainder of the school year and hopefully future years.
○ 3. Implementing a new style of communication to facilitate learning takes time. I
was naive to think that I would be able to effectively implement the math
conversation cards within one class period. This would definitely be something I
would spend more time on in my own classroom to make sure that students really
understand how useful the conversation starters are in their group work and in
their future life.
○ 4. Classroom management is the key to introducing a new style of learning.
Because the classroom that I was using the math conversation cards in was not my
own, it was difficult to get students to truly listen to me and gain understanding
from the information I was providing for them. As well, because I was not their
teacher they did not see me as much of an authority on the idea of math
conversations in comparison to if their teacher presented this idea to them.
○ 5. Always over-prepare for a lesson and gain as many details as possible about
timing beforehand. Something that I believe was a struggle with the activity was
that once I explained about the math conversation cards, the students had no
direction about where to practically go from there because of lack of instruction
from my coordinating teacher. The confusion only resulted in classroom chatter
and not in the immediate use of conversation cards.
● Reflection Questions
○ How can you transfer this experience into your future classroom?
In my future classroom, I would definitely try to use some form of math talk
conversation cards with my students. I think that effective communication is
imperative not only in math classrooms but also as a useful life skill no matter
what a student decides to pursue. The difference in my classroom would be that I
would use the math conversation cards to start off the semester and use them
throughout the course so that they adjust to using the cards and it has more time to
influence student learning.
○ How did your service-learning project change your assumptions of the causes and
solutions needed to address larger societal needs?
I personally do not think that my service-learning project changed my
assumptions of the causes and solutions needed to address larger societal needs
but rather reaffirmed my beliefs about these causes and solutions. I believe that
one of the major issues in learning revolves around exposure which I have learned
throughout my time as a student. Many times there are tons of capable students in
the classroom who just have not been exposed to different styles of learning and
different approaches to growth in the classroom.
○ How did your service-learning project develop your problem solving and critical
thinking skills?
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My service-learning project forced me to think deeper about how to present

information to students in ways that they would be receptive to in the classroom.
It also forced me to reflect on my own performance when it comes to classroom
management and how I can improve for my future students. As well, specifically,
I had to change my service-learning project midway through our field experience
time and this taught me how to adapt to change and learn the importance of
planning ahead when thinking about how to introduce a new learning system in
the classroom.
○ What did you discover about yourself throughout this project?
I learned that I am not as confident as I thought I was in managing a classroom. I
think that middle school as a whole was a tough set of years for me and because I
do not plan to teach middle school, I felt very out of my comfort zone when trying
to provide instruction. Something that will definitely be a challenge for me will be
setting up my classroom management style and gaining the respect of my students
at the beginning of the school year.