Week Ending 2/14

This week I went two days for my field experience. The first day was honestly rough. I taught a small group math lesson with the lowest students in the class.

It was super difficult to keep the students on task because they wanted to sit with their friends and draw all over the whiteboards that they were using to do their problems on. Honestly, I wish it had gone better, but my CT said that it wasn't uncommon to have this issue with that group of students. It collectively took us an hour and a half to get through about nine problems. I didn't even finish my problems with my group because I spent most of my time attempting to keep them on task. And while some of these students are really low, some of the others in the group have at least the foundational skills required to progress with what I was teaching. The lower students didn't even have that, so it was really, really frustrating. I had to be patient with them, and I found that difficult because in my head I was thinking 'how hard is it to get through nine simply two-digit addition and subtraction problems? It shouldn't be that hard'. But it really was. I need to figure out some other strategies for teaching math, which is something I'm sorely lacking, I think.

The second day, the students did a lot of their routine testing. The first did their math tests, which I graded. It was honestly a great experience to grade some of their stuff because it showed me the skills that each student was lacking. Some students wouldn't show their work despite getting the correct answer, which is a skill they really need to have down pat for high school. They also did a spelling test. Mind you, these students are in the second grade. Their spelling was honestly atrocious. For compound words that they had worked on all week, some of these students are performing at a kindergarten level. A lot of these students are not strong readers, so I'm not surprised that they are struggling with spelling.

My goal for the week was to practice positive relationships with the students. I definitely want to get more in line with telling the students the positives of what they're doing rather than the negative because a lot of the time, they are doing things right. Usually, however, people like to focus on the negative. I want to definitely start giving that positive feedback and that positive reinforcement for the students to keep them engaged and on task.