Teacher Reflection (MARS) for November 22, 2010

It turns out that only three students want to work in pairs. The rest want groups of three or four. All of them are interested in choosing their own groups. I'm not sure how that will work, but I might put students into pools and one student could be selected from each pool. Today we also had students attempting to work individually and then checking their work as a group. In addition, students had a little time to work on corrections in their math journals. Using this method kept the class members on task and working quietly.

I want students to try to solve the problems on their own. Some students follow along during the lesson, complete practice problems and then immediately say, "I don't get it," when independent practice is assigned. I don't even think they read the directions or look at examples. It seems to me that students should have learned to "figure out" how to complete work independently by sixth grade. I know my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders definitely learned how to figure out pages on their own. Perhaps, they had no choice because I could only work with two groups at a time, but I believe it might be the most important math skill of all.