Writing 5: Peach Plains

• 12/3 Peach Plains Experience

As future teachers, any time in a classroom is considered valuable. Getting experience in a variety of environments, with an array of students gives insight, and provides inspiration for activities and teaching practices. Peach Plains in particular has a very interesting environment. It seems to have a rather open concept in the classroom, with motion permitting furniture. This has proven to be beneficial for students to move naturally and not feel so confined, and it surprises me that more classrooms do not follow this model. I work in a public school system for a before and after school program, and things (from the outside) seem rather traditional. Therefore, the time spent at Peach Plains Elementary School is definitely worthwhile.

Just from mere observation, the Peach Plains classroom has interesting factors that make it a comfortable learning environment. Aside from the fascinating physical structure of the classroom, the way the teacher runs her classroom is extremely innovative and incorporates individual thinking. If one hears that students have a journal for language arts, you would not think twice. However, they had math journals, where they could record their mathematical questions, findings, and scratch-work. I had never been introduced to this, and they seemed to find it very helpful. It was held to the same standard as a writing journal and it is something I plan to carry into my future classroom.

There were many valuable aspects to the Peach Plains experience, but my favorite piece of math/teaching of math was they way students were taught how to multiply double digit numbers if they were stuck. The numbers were broken down into four chambers, and then multiplied based on their columns. Then, once all of the answers were found, they were added, and you got the correct final answer (example below showing it better than I can explain it). This was helpful for two students in my group, who struggled doing the problem without breaking it down. This stressed and exemplified my understanding that children are all different. Yes, there is no particular "math gene" and everyone is capable of doing math, but everyone learns at different paces and in their own way. I could relate to this because math was not my strong suit, and this would have been helpful for me as a child. I highly recommend this method and plan to use it if I get the chance.

The NCTM’s Effective Mathematics Teaching Practice that I am focusing on is: "Facilitate meaningful mathematical discourse. Effective teaching of mathematics facilitates discourse among students to build shared understanding of mathematical ideas by analyzing and comparing student approaches and arguments."
One of the most important things that I have come to understand in this entire class is that mathematics is a struggling subject, in the sense that we do not discuss answers or methods. It is perceived that there is one way to do problems, and there is no gray area between right and wrong. I did not feel that this was the case for the fourth grade classroom we were in. The posed question was simply, "How many skittles are in the jar?" Then, we allowed time for students to decide their own approach to the problem. After this, the students were allowed compare and contrast their ideas and deem which was most effective. This promoted healthy communication and reasoning skills. It also showed how differently and similarly children think. My group all had the same method: take the number of skittles in an individual package and multiply it by an estimated amount of packages total. Other groups however, decided that it was best just to guess the amount, and others looked at how full one package made the bottom of the jar, and then estimated from there. All methods are useful with such an open-ended question.

Overall, going to Peach Plains is always a pleasure and this experience was no exception. It further proved how valuable mathematical conversation is, especially with the creative minds of young students.