Today, there were several interesting things going on. I think that a list would help me organize my thoughts.
1. I taught math strategies to two students today. The one more or less than ten, and 2-in-your-head and count up. I saw their eyes brighten and exclaim "I get it now!". Talk about heart-rendering. Though all of us ed-school-ers know that we want to teach kids, it's nice to be witness of the learning.
2. Today included math centers. To the students, this was math game time. However, there was a lot of learning and reinforcing happening. Many of the students helped one another, and even taught strategies to one another. It was encouraging to see. However, because of the size (25 students!) of the class and the huge variety of ability levels, I felt that some centers needed more supervision.
3. The morning activities included a journal entry. The topic was an open ended creative assignment in which students were asked to write about anything they wanted. Although I would love this kind of question, I saw that many of the students had great difficulty with it. They couldn't think of anything to write, which amazed me. I thought that kids were imaginative and thrived on creative freedom. I wonder if they had difficulty because of concern over doing it "right", or they are concrete thinking students, or if they haven't reached a developmental level of extending their own thoughts in writing. Maybe it's something I haven't thought of?
4. I remembered how exciting Challenge 24 can be :)
5. As UVa students that come into the classroom, I wonder about my position. Am I teacher? Am I friend? I have found that it is a difficult place to be sometimes. Some of the students want to be my friend, and I'd love to be theirs. However, I am there to teach, observe, and learn myself. The path I've chosen is to be more teacher/adult than friend. Sometimes I wonder if it might be better to be more friend than adult? It would certainly be more enjoyable...but that's not why I'm there.
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It sounds like you got to see and do some really neat things during this visit. Since my teacher does not teach math, I never get to see math lessons going on in my classroom so it's nice to hear about someone else's experiences in this subject area. Sometimes in our math class I find myself thinking that the ideas are great, but are they really practical in the classroom. However, it seems by what you described going on in your classroom that is possible to do really fun, yet beneficial, activities in math. I think this is hard for me to picture sometimes because I was taught math from more of a "traditional" point-of-view.
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