Post Observation #1

On September 30th I was observed for the first time. I felt that my lesson went relatively well but I did learn a few things after talking with my professor.

I realized that I need to be a little more prepared when it comes to deeper questioning. I felt like I was constantly asking shallow questions like "what's the next step?" At the same time I felt that was the only question I could ask. There were points where I asked the students "why did we do that?" That was a little deeper but not as deep of questioning as I would like. This is important to me because I want the students to really think. I don't want them to see math as only a process. That can lead to them trying to memorize the process rather than having them think about the math. What I want to do is every day before a lesson, I can write down 6 or 7 deep questions instead of trying to think of them on the fly. These will be questions I can ask in anticipation of student misconceptions. I may not be able to account for every possible misconception or question I get but at least I will be prepared for most. Also the combination of preparing questions and students asking questions may spark my ability to come up with even more deep questions.

 I also want to work on reflection. Every day I come home and don't really think about how my day went. I get home and start working on my GVSU class work. I don't think about what went well and what I could improve on. This is important to me because it is away to refine my craft of teaching. If I can figure out what is working in my classroom I can keep doing it. Whatever may not be working can be edited, tweaked, or just completely scrapped from my teaching style. When I get home each day I am going to make a list of things I did well in the classroom and things I did not do well. I want to keep a tally. Every time I do the same thing well, I'll put a tally mark next to it. Same for things I didn't do well. The goal will be to get to a point where I stop putting tally marks next to the things I need to improve on. Odds say there will always be something to improve on but it's nice to strive for perfection knowing I will never reach it.

These are the two most important things I learned from my first observation. I need to be more prepared before each lesson and I need to reflect after each lesson. To help me improve I am going to write up deeper questions before the lesson and keep a running tally of things I did well and things I need to improve on in a journal.