I had a big reality check yesterday while teaching a lesson about awareness.  The students were all working on a collaborative piece and I was working with a small group while (trying to) monitoring the rest of the class, glancing around, checking who was just chatting and who was engaged.  I called to a couple of tables because they seemed like they were off task and I wanted to get them back on task. They seemed to keep working.  However, when I finished with my small group and walked around to check progress and ask and answer questions I saw to my dismay that those tables were not very far along on the graphic organizer.  As this was an observed lesson, I reflected with my University supervisor on why this might have been and came to the conclusion that I should have done more checks for understanding while modeling the problem and simplified the task so they were not dealing with so many numbers.  Also, I need to not "tunnel vision" on my small group so much and maintain awareness of the whole class.  I also reflected with my Master teacher who suggested that it is possible they were taking a long time to choose their items off the menu, so I proposed that next time I do this activity, or he does, we fix the items so that they are not wasting time deciding.  I am still working on being more aware of my whole classroom and learning from my master teacher how to do that. 

One thing I do know that I struggle with is asking probing questions.  More specifically, I need to come to terms with the fact that I am not badgering them when I am pushing their thinking.  Also, when I am walking around while the students are working on collaborative work or exploration problems, I need to get more comfortable asking them questions even if they are doing the problems well.  I think I can help myself with this by scripting things out before class and going through the problems for the day and anticipating questions I can ask and that the students might ask.  Also, I will look at the academic vocabulary for the day and come up with questions based on the vocabulary. 

These are the last few weeks of my time at CVLCC and it is a bittersweet time.  Teaching is going well, but I am sad to be leaving my sixth graders.  I will persevere.  A thing I know I need to work on is "with-itness."  I sometimes get to focused on the small group I am working with and so I am not completely aware of what everybody else is doing; also during focus lessons, I don't always realize when students aren't completely paying attention.  I am always making an effort in my focus lessons to make eye contact with every table periodically so I know I have everybody with me.  Sometimes though I don't succeed.  I think that this will come with experience, but I do want to get better now too.  I try to position myself carefully when working with small groups so I can overlap monitoring the room while the small group is engaged and solving the problem, but I have a hard time splitting my attention.  I don't know if it is my own innate struggle with multitasking or inexperience in the classroom that plays a larger role in his, but I do know that I will get better at this because it is important to keep the whole room engaged.  What are some techniques I can use or some strategies to better keep track of the whole class during collaborative or independent work pieces.  Also, how can I improve at knowing that the whole class is engaged during focus lessons?

I have had some stumbles, but I feel like I really rounded a corner this week.  I figured out how to be comfortable minimizing my voice and maximizing my students' voices during focus lessons and I figured out how to construct high quality instructional materials.  I am proud of my students and my own progress.  I still have some areas that I do need to work on.  I am always working on slowing down and maximizing my students' voices and minimizing my own during focus lessons.  I am also always working on better checks for understanding.  Perhaps my biggest struggle is just slowing down.  I have made great strides, but I still need to work on it.  I don't know how much of it is experience and how much is learned, but I feel like as I get more experience teaching the class I get to know their natural pacing better and I calibrate myself better.  I suppose with each new classroom I am in their will be a learning curve, but having this experience will help reduce the learning curve because I will know better what to look for in terms of the subtler cues that inform how a class is paced, such as the noise level during practice problems.  My earlier self wasn't as aware of the change in the sound level so I wouldn't know when to transition back to the modeled problems.  With the help of my master teacher, I have gotten a lot better at reading that level and knowing the first strains of idle chatter.  I also learned to watch the tables.  Keep part of my brain on their papers because often kids who are done with the practice problem will turn over the notes packet to the next page.  I keep an eye on the tables and see how many people are on the next page.  I have also figured out that having the students take me through problems step by step, having a different student give each step, also helps pacing considerably because the time it takes for the student to process the previous steps, formulate the next step, and express said next step is usually enough for the rest of the class to catch up and be in the same place with us.  Also, I put a considerable amount of thought into who I am going to call on.  I look at the seating chart before the lesson and select students to grab as much of the spectrum as possible as well as the maximum area of the room.  That is, I try to select students in all parts of the room so no one part gets ignored and I select both high and low students so they can learn from each other.  I put as much, or more, thought into constructing my problems.  I always use my students' names and look up local mall directories to pick stores or find ads for things when appropriate and I am exceedingly careful about choosing food items that are familiar and culturally relevant but not stereotypical.  I look things up to see if it is something the kids might know.  In designing the numbers, I start backwards.  I start at what I want the answer to be and figure out numbers that will facilitate the conceptual understanding for the students.  It is a delicate process coming up with the numbers because numbers that we as teachers might not think are too bad can absolutely stymie the students.  As I get to know my students better, I put things from their lives in the problem.  Last week, I had a problem about a girl's brother on the soccer team because I had gone to the game Friday and she had talked to me about it Monday so I put it in a lesson.  I find that the students engage better with the problem when it is something very familiar and comfortable because they don't focus on what a widget is, for instance.  They focus on the numbers.  

Today during our third period class, the Math Coach came in to get some sample materials for a principal cohort walkthrough happening tomorrow and she needed to talk to my master teacher, so he needed me to step in and take over the lesson while he talked to her.  I had initially been talking to the Math Coach and answering her questions as best I could, so I had lost track of where he was in the lesson and so I needed to look at their papers as I walked up and look at the screen.  I figured out where we were and plunged in, randomly choosing students to explain steps and walk me through it.  One of my students who has had particular trouble with calculations but has shown vast improvement came up to the board of his own volition and did the major division of the problem perfectly, which made me very proud.  We got through the problem and it was pretty good timing because the Math Coach left at that point and he took back over.  As we were switching, the class gave me a round of applause, which made me feel very good about how I had done.  Just wanted to share a cool moment from today :)  For a bit of context, I teach first period, observe and help with second, and 

        We are having a problem with our third period class.  Our most critical target students are in that class along with some of our brightest students.  Where first period can get through a lesson in two days, third period might need an extra day.  We've been trying to figure out how to accommodate all of our students while trying to keep everybody at relatively the same pace.  We thought we'd try splitting the class into two groups and each of us teaching one of the groups.  As it was our first time doing this, it was a bit choppy.  My group did well, but I feel like I could have done somethings better.  Firstly, the physical arrangement of my group's space left some to be desired.  I had about 15 or so students in my group, gathered around four tables.  Because I was using the board in the back of the room, the tables were a bit cramped so one of the four tables ended up being behind the arc of the others.  My issue with this is that they were right on that edge where they had both my voice and my master teacher's voice teaching his group and had to figure out which to listen to.  If we do this again, I want to either fit those kids in the arc or expand the arc. 
      Regarding my board work, I tried an idea I have heard about in several classes that happens in Japanese classrooms.  I made the decision that I would not erase anything until the end of the period and so I would have to organize it better to ensure that I could use the whole board.  Complicating this was the fact that my board was smaller than the main board.  I feel like I acquitted myself nicely.  I was able to not erase the board and keep it relatively well organized. 
      Pertaining to this weeks readings in class, I do still need to improve on knowing when I have the entire class's attention and when some kids are straying.  My mind is very active and that sometimes gets in my way when I am teaching.  I can easily not notice that I am losing entire tables (groups of four) because I am trying to be mindful of my time, my pacing, the problem I am solving, checking for understanding, and God knows what else I might be thinking in the moment.  I really need to work on clearing my mind and just being in the moment, being right there with my kids.  I know that they are my priority and I do everything I can to make it so in the classroom.  One technique that I think will really help me that I have not really thought about before is scripting things.  I don't mean second by second, but presolving problems on a separate sheet so I am not going on the fly, and figuring out how I can elaborate on things before hand.  What tends to happen to me is that I think of a new way to explain something or a different way to think about something midstream and try to implement it right then and there.  This never goes well.  I think scripting could help me quiet that or at least not fall prey to it.  I am going to look into other possible strategies I can use to help with this. 
     

For the last few weeks we have been teaching the students to think proportionally in order to solve problems with ratios and proportions.  They have, for the most part, gotten the hang of it quite well.  We started with models and pictures that they have been familiar with since the early grades to establish a basis with them.  They all thrived with this. We then moved on to using tables which they also did very well on.   It seems to me that, at least for this group of students, they have a strong intuitive grasp of the symbols and how to recognize the patterns in the table.  We used these skills to build to the algorithm for proportions.  At this point, we had some struggles.  The students were able to use the models and the tables to bridge the gap and strengthen their grasp of the algorithm.  We also embedded some basic algebraic reasoning in the form of using inverse operation to solve proportions.  They think about it in terms of solving a basic equation.  
Today, I taught both second and third periods and it went pretty well.  I still need to work on answering individual questions to the whole class during direct lessons.  I tend to not repeat the questions and answer directly to the student, thereby losing the group.  I got a lot better about it in third period.  Also, in second period I struggled with reading the noise level of the class while they were doing quick drill exercises during the lecture.  The way we set it up, we modeled one problem and they did two.  I got a lot better in third period of reading the group's noise/involvement level in terms of when they were ready for me to go over the problems and move on.  I got a lot better at checks for understanding as well.  During the science periods, I planned a few lessons for the end of this week.  Did I mention it is halloween?  The kids were all dressed in costumes which was pretty cool.  So were a lot of the teachers.  
My master teacher and I are going to try a new teaching method with our third period group.  Our general plan is for us to split the first two periods (I teach one, he teaches one) and then team teach the third period.  Our schematic for this team teaching is to split the class into two groups, each taking one and doing the direct lesson with the smaller group.  This might help us get through the notes a little faster and make better use of our class time.  We are doing a test flight tomorrow during third period, so I will write it up tomorrow and let you know how it went.  

This past Friday was an interesting day.  We worked with the students on proportional reasoning and cross multiplying.  The sixth graders have actually progressed pretty quickly from using models and creating picture ratios (using icons on a page such as comparing squares to circles).  All of the ratios we used in the models were within ratios.  As we progressed from models, we moved to ratio tables.  The kids really took to using the tables and become proficient very rapidly.  On Friday, we did a lesson on cross multiplication using the concept of inverse operations which we have been emphasizing the last few weeks.  I took over second period on Friday and taught them the lesson.  Checks for understanding, which had been a bit of an issue, were more of a strength during this lesson; I used the technique of having the students hold up from 1 to 5 fingers depending on their comfort level with the material so I could see at a glance where the class was at a whole.  My master teacher gave me another great one called fist to five where the hold up from a closed fist to five fingers depending on how much time they need or how many more problems they want to do on a particular topic.  I probably went a little quickly, but the kids acquitted themselves admirably.  My master teacher told me afterwards that I am greatly improving but I still needed to figure out how to cue myself to pause when the students need time to finish writing.  My master teacher tasked me with spear heading a scale model project with maps for Friday, which I came up with and we introduced on Friday after going through the notes.  We discussed, briefly, the history of German expansion during WWII in order to bridge to the project about using the scale to determine either the inches on the map from the actual miles or vice-versa.  After classes (Fridays are half days at CVLCC) we had a lunch meeting with the principals about what happened during the field trip at the Museum of Man.  Supposedly there were some incidents during our time at the museum that the staff were none to pleased with, and some parents had complained.  It is so difficult in setting up field trips to get all the ducks in a row in terms of making sure the chaperons are well versed in what is expected of them as well as what is expected of the students.  Really, it all comes down to the students knowing full well what is expected of them as representatives of the school, but the chaperons and teachers have to be able to manage the group.  We had enough chaperons, along with the  teachers and myself, to keep the groups around 3 or 4 per adult.  The three teachers took larger groups and I took a group that as originally 4 but became three as one peeled off to join what I believe was her mother's group.  My group of three was perfectly behaved and I vouched for them when the teachers and principals were trying to figure out what happened.  In any case, the principals are working on figuring out who was responsible.  After that meeting and traffic duty, we had a short reflection meeting followed by some research proposals.  During the reflection, my fellow sixth grade teachers and I all put, independent of each other, that we liked our team members which made us all happy when we found out.  
After this, I drove south to the Border View Family YMCA for CLVCC's middle school boys team soccer game against Montgomery Middle.  Some of my sixth graders and the seventh graders I used to work with were on the team and were pleased and surprised to see me.  A few more students came to be in the crowd with me.  I had a really good time and I think it meant a lot to my students for me to take my time to go support them.  I am officially just signed up to go next week, but I and thinking I will start going more regularly.  
Today, we taught them more about proportions and I wrote a lesson for Wednesday.  I again taught second period, and I did a lot better with figuring out how to pause.  What I realized is that as I move around the front of the room, I can see every student's paper in the room and so I can tell how far they are in writing and whether they are ready for me to continue.  I just need to get more comfortable with allowing myself to pause and be quiet while they catch up, but I am hard at work on it. Checks for understanding and slowing down are two of the biggest things I am working on, and I am doing quite well with them. 

We took the kids to Balboa Park today, to the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center and the Museum of Man.  The buses arrived a few minutes early at Fleet.  We off loaded their lunches, then the kids.  The museum people needed to give our students some information on the goings on for the day; today was the Great American Shakeout after all.  There were 3 teachers, myself, and 21 parents to manage the 102 students.  They had already determined groups of students to be assigned to different chaperons, I was given three girls to look after for the day.  We walked through the Science center's exhibits until the earthquake drill.  At 10:18, the alarms went off and I got my kids and other students in the area under tables and other sturdy surfaces in the vicinity.  I was walking between all of them, making sure they were staying calm.  One of the museum people chivied myself and others who hadn't ducked and covered yet into a corner of the room until the all clear.  Then we led our students back outside.  My students asked if it had been a real quake; I told them it had been a drill.  Then we watched an Imax movie called Forces of Nature.  It was quite good, but unfortunately the erratic and sweeping camera movements gave one of my girls a headache.  Luckily, we had lunch out by the fountain right after, so she had a chance to recover.  We then walked across the park to the Museum of Man where the students were gathered on the steps for instructions.  They let us in a few chaperoned groups at a time.  My group was the very first let in, and my girls behaved very well.  We went up to the Egyptian exhibit first and saw the mummies and other artifacts.  We walked through the Kumeyaay exhibit, with the girls reminiscing about their third grade trip here while they were learning about the Kumeyaay.  After they, we looked at the Hominids.  As we made our way downstairs, we found ourselves in the Mayan exhibit; the carvings were breathtaking in their complexity and size.  Then we found ourselves in an exhibit on how people with disabilities adapt.  There were very cool things here, like a challenge of blindness.  You had to put on a blindfold and use a blind person's cane to guess what some textured panels were on the walls.  One of my girls got them all right within one try on each surface.  There was a modified typewriter called a "Brailler"  that the kids could type on and make braille phrases.  They mostly typed their names as well as mine .  This was the end of the trip, as soon after we gathered them back outside the museum to walk to the buses.  We did a head count at the steps outside the museum and again on the buses.  I learned a great deal today about managing large groups of children in public places like that today.  The biggest thing I learned is that solving all the logistics well ahead of time makes all the difference in the world.  Because they already had the groups listed, we were able to break the larger group down quite quickly and get in to the exhibits in shorter order than if we had to make the groups on the spot.  Also, having enthusiastic parents who want to come out in large numbers (21 parents is quite remarkable, from my experience) definitely helps, especially if you have already established a good working relationship with them.  They are very willing and able partners who can take a lot of the burden of managing the group off of you .  Also, having previously established routes of travel such as from Fleet to the Museum of Man already decided is a major help because then you are not having to try to find your way, you can just go.  A good rapport with the students themselves goes a long way because they are more apt to listen to you.  My three girls were perfectly lovely the whole day, staying where I could see them and following directions if I needed them to do something.  They made my first field trip as a teacher figure much easier to deal with.  We are doing a scale map project tomorrow, and I will write another entry for that.  

On Monday we had an all day staff development that consisted of three two hour sessions.  In the first session, the middle and high school math teachers met as a group to make the program more consistent across the grades and get some common ground as to what to work on with the students.  We all agreed that the students have strong computational knowledge of fractions, but no conceptual knowledge, which is a big deficiency.  We talked about different ways to explain the concept of fractions, using models and algorithms, and then moved on to figuring out what skills we want to emphasize with them now.  Those skills were reasoning and critical thinking.  The problem here is that if they start these skills in middle school, when they immediately need to have high level skills, they can't possibly catch up in time, so we need to start critical thinking and reasoning much earlier.  I suggested 5th grade at least and the session runner suggested all the way back in K, which is much smarter.  The more exposure we can give them, no matter the level, the more comfortable they will be by the time they get to us in middle school.  
  The second session was the whole middle and high schools and had to do with performance tasks.  We learned about different kinds of performance tasks and how to use them for better assessments.  We also discussed what we are doing in the early part of the unit in each grade level.  I came up with a great activity that we are going to do based on a Jewish game for percents.