During this class period Mrs. K. had the students walk around and share some sentences that they wrote with other students. I liked the peer discussion as a way to get them to think about what they had written and to gain new insight by reading and talking to the other students about what they wrote.
Mrs. K. awarded a buck to some of the students who did well on a spelling lesson that focused on suffixes. This was an easy way to get the students to pay close attention to a new lesson that Mrs. K. really wanted them to learn.
I liked how she encourage creative thinking by asking students to come up with a sequel story to a story about Dogzilla invading mouseopolis.
During a multiplication lesson today, Mrs. K. worked out several problems with the students on the board. This made me think about my multiplication lesson and the fact that I did not use a whiteboard lesson to introduce the topic. Maybe next time I teach, I will do a whiteboard lesson before I read the story. That seems to be how she does her lessons anyway. She does at least one intro mini-lesson before she reads a piece of literature to the students. She did a really good job today of incorporating the gradual release of responsibility with a math lesson which I had not previously observed in a classroom while being conscious of the process that was going on.
When the students finally did work on their own, I walked around the room helping them work on their problems. Most of the questions were on the word problems on the worksheet. I remembered having trouble with word problems myself as a student and thought about how hard it is going to be to make sure that my students get how to solve word problems. I think that this will have to do with developing a mathematical imagination and practice writing their own mathematical questions and answers.
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