October 30

Today in math we learned about the artist Sol Lewitt. Sol writes directions for people to create his art masterpieces.  We pretended we were like Sol and wrote directions for other students in our class to create chalk artwork. It was extremely fun to see our art vision come to life!

October 16

Today in math we presented our math lessons and got feedback on our lesson plans.  Next week we will be teaching our lesson to fifth graders at Richmond Elementary.  I'm very excited to apply what we have learned and gotten feedback on to actual students.  Our lesson plan involves equivalent fractions.  I think we have a really interesting way to present this to our students!

October 9

Today we learned about how we can make learning about patterns fun and interactive for our students. We were given multiple resources and websites to use that could help our students learn about patterns in multiplication as well as patterns in artwork and photographs.  

October 2,2012

Today in math we focused on geometry and how we can better teach geometry to elementary school students.  We created some visual representations of geometric shapes with paper and also took pictures of geometric shapes, related them to a standard, and created a powerpoint presentation.  I felt these were  fun and engaging activities that I could use in my future classroom.

9-18-2012

Today in math, we had a guest speaker from NASA come and talk about the variety of resources NASA has to offer teachers.  I really enjoyed the variety of activities we were able to participate in, and hopefully use in our future classrooms.  I specifically liked creating our own aircraft and launching it from our seats. I know that many of the things I learned will be useful in implementing, both in my student teaching and in my own classroom.

Math Week 3

Today we were given the opportunity to work with a variety of websites that will be helpful in our teaching careers.  My favorite website was rubistar.4teachers.org.  Here we were able to create rubrics for our students effectively and efficiently.  I have hand written rubrics before and it took one to two hours to complete.  On the other hand, this website allowed me to create rubrics in minutes.  As teachers, time is our greatest asset. This website allows teachers to save time when evaluating their students.   I will definitely be using this website when I start teaching and assessing my students.

September 4th

Today in class we learned about spiral curriculum, how topics build upon one another as students move up in grade level.  As a teacher, I need to see where my students are in terms of their learning and see what my students already know before planning my lessons.  This is extremely important for me to remember, especially because students will never be on the same page.  I need to be able to modify and adjust my teaching for the wide variety of learners in my classroom.