Observation Day Math

Each Friday of this semester the students of Memorial University's Primary/Elementary Consecutive Program participate in observation days at various local schools. So far I have completed five of these observation days and have seen math being taught during four of them. I am shocked when classmates come back to class and tell us that they are yet to see any regular math happening in classrooms.

As a math major I am very pleased to see as much math happening in schools as possible, I get quite excited when I able to get involved in students' learning experiences. During the first observation day I was able to observe a class of grade 2 students who were learning about patterns. The teacher first explained to the students what the elements of a pattern were and then what the core of the pattern was. The teacher then modeled several patterns using connector blocks and asked the students to tell what the elements were and what the core was. Once the students had seen many examples of patterns the teacher then placed them into groups and gave each group different manipulatives to make their own patterns. Students were given connector blocks, colored wooden blocks, linking chains, etc... Once they had mastered the process of making patterns the teacher then made a request of what type of pattern she wanted each group to make. For example a pattern that contained 3 elements and had a core of size 4 repeated 5 times could be in general ABBCABBCABBCABBCABBC.

The second observation day I was in a grade 1 classroom where the teacher let me get involved in her math lesson. I stood in front of the class and held up paper plates with colored stickers on them, the plates had 1-10 stickers on them. Some plates had all one color and some plates and two different colored stickers on them. Each student had their own cards with the numbers 1-10 on them and had to count the stickers and then hold up the number that represented how many stickers were on the plate. This was nice because it familiarized students with the numbers 1-10 and also started them on addition. For example a plate with 6 blue dots and 2 red dots had a total of 8 dots.

The third class I observed was a special education class, this class I did not see any math since Fridays are "games day" for the students. These students are only in this class for one or two periods a day and usually need more help with language arts activities. However I did get to see some very interesting games that were educational for the students, there was a game that focused on phonics, a game that focused on sentence formation, picture bingo, and of course one of my favorites, Scattergories.

The fourth week of observation I was in a class of grade 6 students. This was a great experience for me. First thing in the morning the teacher gave me the guide to the math book and asked if I would correct a few questions that the students were supposed to have done previously and then teach the next section. I was thrilled about this :) He gave me sufficient time to get my thoughts together and understand what I was supposed to be teaching them, then while the students were in music class I was able to test out the SMART board for the very first time and see how it worked. Once the students returned I started correcting the questions and then taught them how to compare very large numbers (in the millions). As I was conducting the lesson the teacher wrote down comments about my lesson, and during lunch he gave me a sheet full of wonderful feedback. I thought this was a great idea, it let me know what I was doing right, what I should keep doing, and what I need to improve on.

Last Friday was the fifth week of observation and I was in a grade 3 classroom, this was a bit of a difficult day for me. The regular teacher was out sick and I was observing a substitute, this was nice because I got to see what it was like to be a substitute walking into a classroom and having to pick up where someone else left off. However the students do tend to give substitutes a bit of a harder time, they push the limits to see what they can do without getting in trouble. The math lesson was supposed to be on estimating and rounding off numbers to the nearest 10, but I don't think it was a very successful lesson. This seemed to be a new topic for students and they were very confused as too why certain numbers round down and not up. This was not explained to them very well because the substitute hadn't realized it was totally new to them. I think If I was in his shoes I would have noticed the students were having difficulty and went back and explained how rounding works in a different way so more students would understand better.

Overall I have seen quite a bit of math during my observation days and quite pleased with the results, When I become a teacher I would hope that I would be able to not only conduct a math lesson but bring a little bit of math into the other subjects as well, like in language arts you can read books that have some math in them, or even in the younger grades you can count how many days you have been in school since the start of the year.