Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Today was one of those rare days when I got the opportunity to step out of my classroom as visit 3 amazing 5th grade teachers in our county.  I really appreciate the opportunity to learn from others and I thoroughly enjoyed visiting each of their classrooms.  Here is a brief reflection of my time in each classroom I visited today.

My teamie and I, have a goal for our students to exceed expected growth this year in Math.  We have a record of high proficiency, but have struggled with growth.  We are looking to make some changes to the way we teach math this year and we really enjoyed learning from our colleagues today.

The first teacher we visited used a different approach to math word problems.  It was something I had never seen or even thought about doing, but I plan to give it a try.  She intentionally would not display or print the problem for the students to see, but instead she required them to listen to her read the problem.  She would read it more than one time, but it required the students to really listen to what the question was asking.  She also required them to draw a picture or model to prove their answer.  I was really impressed that all of her students seemed very comfortable with the models.  It made me think about my own class and I have to say, my students would not have been able to produce the models like these kids did today.  Some of them could do it, but others would struggle to come up with a model to prove their answer.

The other two teachers we visited were from the same school and pretty much taught the same lesson, but they each had their own unique teaching style.  We really enjoyed the high level of questioning in one room and the classroom management strategies in the other room.

All in all it was a great day and I look forward to implementing some of these strategies with my own students and hope that it makes a difference.