Blog 3

Being able to go to the elementary school was a great experience! Any opportunity to work with students is extremely valuable. I feel that the lesson was well thought out and organized on paper, but many questions came up as we went. For example, some groups cut out two feet to measure, while others used one. While that is not major, there was still a level of uncertainty. It all worked out in the end. 

I saw a lot of mathematical thinking among the students. A question I asked frequently was when their foot did not land perfectly, whether they thought it was a half or quarter. Some suggested something without a prompt, while others rounded up or down to an exact foot. When I asked them to be more specific, they were able to determine a quarter or half. I also saw them struggle with converting feet to inches, including not knowing that a ruler equaled one foot (12 inches). To my delight, once they were reminded what a foot equaled, it was like a light turned on and they remembered. In addition, I asked them where the half inch hash on the ruler was, and from there, they could determine the quarter inch hash. All in all, they needed guidance, but were by no means completely lost.   

There are a couple things I would have done differently. To start, I would have rather had them walk heal-to-toe to measure certain things. While this could make finding perimeter difficult, I like the idea of keeping them moving and doing just the lengths of certain things. This could also move things along quicker so we could spend more time analyzing they data. Besides that, I wished we could have been outside, but no one can control the weather. Overall, I believe it was a great success and I give major credit to the people that took charge in the classroom, and also those who found other things to measure since it was raining outside. 

Growing up, I do not distinctly remember doing anything fun in math. It was rather boring and I think that stretches to now, because I do not enjoy math. What this has showed me, is that the experience is almost as important as the content. What I need to do next, is to consider ways to make math more interactive and memorable. They can have positive thoughts on their math experiences, and the content itself will be remembered better.

I am grateful to work with students at any point, and the staff was very friendly. These students were smart and had many good ideas. As I said before, they were no where near lost in the material, rather they just needed guidance. In conclusion, my largest takeaway is that when I have my classroom, I will strive to make a more enjoyable and interactive math environment.