Week 4 Reflection

gideonking. (2008) Lesson Planning. [Online Image] http://bit.ly/1hf1YJe 

          In this weeks class we covered chapters 11 and 12, which were Fractions and Decimals in the Making Math Meaningful textbook. In addition to the lesson that was focused more on the importance of understanding the basics of Fraction than decimals, we also had presenters for our lesson planning activities. This week I was one of the presentations and I was assigned chapter 12, which was focused on decimals. After presenting my activity I was immediately disappointed in both my activity and my presentation. This was the first time that I had done something an activity such as this and I do not think that I did a very good job. The activity that I chose was 12.13 on page 294 in the Making Math Meaningful text. My activity was grounded in teaching students division of whole numbers by decimals. I posed the problem that Ahmed needed a dollar to buy a chocolate bar, but his father gave him a handful of change. I then asked the class to try and find out as many combinations of nickels, dimes and quarters that equal a dollar. I feel like my idea on how I was to convey the division of decimals by whole numbers got lost along the way in my planning. Instead of asking for combinations, I should have asked, how many quarters would Ahmed need to make one dollar, then how many dimes, then how many nickels. I should have then asked, as a bonus question, how many different combinations of nickels, dimes and quarters could Ahmed make to buy his one dollar chocolate bar. I think that this would have been a much better activity and would have demonstrated division and multiplication of decimals by a whole number much better than the activity I thought of at first. However, hindsight is 20/20. The point of this program is to learn how to be an effective teacher, and having never done this before, I think that I have learned from my critical mistakes and next time I have this opportunity I will focus my activity more; I think that I got caught up trying to make the activity from the book more original than it had to be, and thus I lost the whole point of the activity in the first place. 
          In terms of the lesson of the day I think that Patricia made some very interesting points about fractions. She made a point that most of our teachers when we were growing up probably just skimmed over fractions and that this is a huge mistake. She explained that after whole numbers, fractions are the next important building block for all mathematical knowledge. I had never thought about that before. She also explained that many of our math teachers probably didn’t understand fractions that well, which is the reason why we were taught specific algorithms and that any other method was wrong. For example, she showed us that to divide two fractions, we don’t need to flip the numerator and denominator and multiply, but rather, if the denominators are easily divisible, you can just divide across, much like multiplication. This is much easier, and makes much more sense than having to flip the fraction and multiply. This is a strategy that I will remember and will use in my own teaching. Instead of saying that there is only one way to do something, this algorithm is an opportunity to showcase to the kids that there are many ways in math to get the same answer. In summation, I learned a lot today about being a successful teacher, not only in math, but also in general. Lesson plans and activities must be clear and concise, as well pertain exactly to what you are trying to teach. Instead of getting caught up in trying to make the curriculum fit a lesson plan and activity, your activity should seamlessly fit within the curriculum. My failure in this lesson planning activity has shown me that I need to work on being clear and concise in my planning and formulating. However, mistakes foster further learning and I am looking forward to building my knowledge of how to be an effective teacher.