Marquetta Strait March 04, 2013 CU Life Reflection: 5 Claflin Universitys Learning Improvement for Future Excellence (CU

Life) has been a wonderful opportunity for me. The experience at Mitchell Math and Science Elementary School has caused me to reevaluate my instructional strategies. I want to engage my students in productive struggle and increase the students critical thinking and reasoning skills. My mentor teachers have welcomed me into their classroom with extended arms. They also have provided me with an abundance of resources, such as a math rap to teach the students the process of solving math problems. To enhance my instructional strategies, my mentor teachers allowed me to do a recorded mini-lesson with their students. Prior to me teaching my lesson in Ms. Blacks third grade class, I asked her whether she read Julia Donaldsons The Spiffiest Giant in her class. She said no and my lesson was formed. I wanted to focus on the students writing skills, but I knew the lesson had to be short due to time constraint. My lesson was based on the short story The Spiffiest Giant. The story is about a giant that lives in a town. The giant realizes that he is one of the scruffiest giants in town and goes to town seeking new clothing. He buys a spiffy tie, shoes, shirt, pants, belt, and socks. He leaves his clothes behind at the shop and goes on venturing around town. As he walks around the town, he encounters several animals. Each animal complains about their lack of resources, such as a scarf or a home. Feeling sympathy for the animals, the giant would give a piece of his

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clothing. After a while, the giant finally is close to being naked after donating his clothing. The overall moral of the story was that the giant was helpful. The students really enjoyed the story. They were able to grasp the concept that being helpful is important and helps create a better society. After our discussion, I gave the students a

worksheet. The worksheet, that I created, focuses on the purpose of being helpful. The name of the worksheet is called Helpful is My Middle Name. The worksheet has a picture of a cloud and lines for the students to write on the writing prompt. The students were instructed to draw an illustration inside the cloud of a time that they were helped or helped someone. They then were to write about their experience being helped or having helped someone on the lines. As I walked around the classroom, I noticed that some of the students were writing simple sentences and some were including specific details. I believe the experience in Ms. Blacks class went well. I was able to observe the students writing skills. By having the students write based on their personal experiences, the students were able to work on their narrative writing. If I were to extend this lesson, I would have the students discuss roles within the community that are helpful, such as the police, firefighters, mayor, or pet control. In Mr. Wingards fourth grade class, I taught a lesson on doubling numbers. The lesson began

with me posing a question whether the students would prefer a penny that doubles for thirty days or receive $100,000. Of course the students agreed that they would prefer the $100,000. After hearing their opinions, I introduced the story by Demi, One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale. The story is about raja who believed that he was wise and fair. Every year he kept nearly all the people's rice for himself. Then a village girl named Rani devises a clever plan, using the surprising power of doubling to win more than one billion grains of rice from the raja

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The purpose of incorporating the story into my lesson was to increase the students knowledge in math concepts of doubling, place values, & multiplying. It also has great moral lessons that go along with the story, such as scarcity of food and resources in different cultures. Throughout the story, I had stopped to ask the students how they would feel if they were in Ranis shoes. Before divulging Ranis master plan, I instructed the students to discuss a strategy within their groups that would help Rani get rice from the raja. I continued in the story and stopped in the story where the writer tells Ranis plan. Each student was then given a One Grain of Rice chart that displayed thirty days like a calendar. For each day, Rani would receive more rice. She started with one grain on the first day and then two grains on the second day. I questioned the students what would be the third day. After the students found the pattern, I instructed them to continue working in their groups to find the amount of grains rice for the first seven days. I allowed the students to practice their

multiplication and employ any strategies that they needed to find the solution to the problem. After majority of the students were almost finished with the first week, I pulled out a bag of rice and distributed rice to each group. The students were to use the rice as a manipulative to show how the initial amount of rice grew over the course of a week. For example, if the answer was sixteen for day four, the students were expected to have sixteen grains of rice in the fourth days box. As I observed the students in their groups, the students were really engaged in their work. They stayed on task and used their Ipads for calculators when the numbers began getting larger. For the closure of the lesson, I came back to the PowerPoint. I posed the question again whether the students would prefer a penny that doubles for thirty days or receive $100,000. The students were definitely ready and all yelled the penny. I then showed the students that if they chose the penny, after thirty days, they would receive $5,368,709.12.

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Overall, I believe both of my mini-lessons went well. I believe that the experience of being at a STEM-based school really enhanced my strategies. I wanted to target those areas that the students may have needed some assistance. Through the CU Life Program, my future class will include more hands-on activities and I will try to make the content relatable, as much as possible, to the real-world.