Marquetta Strait February 06, 2013 CU Life Math Strategies Training Reflection: 1 On the first day of Claflin Universitys

Learning Improvement for Future Excellence (CU Life) mathematics training, we were introduced to Ms. Nelson. Ms. Nelson is a mathematics coach and the Assistant Principal at Brookdale Elementary School. Brookdale Elementary School is one of the priority schools in Orangeburg Consolidated School District 5, which are schools that have not made any improvements over a period of time. When schools are priority schools, these schools receive grant money to improve their schools. Ms. Nelson has completed several years as an educator and has a myriad of instructional strategies that will better our teaching experience with our students. As Common Core Standards become more prevalent within our education courses, Ms. Nelson felt it was her duty to inform us on how Common Core will affect our classrooms and our teaching. The Common Core Standards provides uniformity within our education system across the United States. Common Cores Smarter Balance Test will be more rigorous and will also require students to explain their answers. This is a top priority within taking on the Common Core Standards. Some of the math practices that will be used in the classroom are making sense of problems and persevere in solving them, construct viable arguments and critique the reasons of others, model with mathematics, use appropriate tools strategically, and attend to precision. The ultimate goal is to have students shift from procedural understanding to conceptual understanding. Within teaching the standards, teachers should have a strong lesson plan cycle. Within their lesson plan, there should be daily orals or review, anticipatory set, objective and

M. Strait|2

purpose, direct instruction, guided practice, independent practice, and a closure. During the daily oral or homework review, this is a great time to review on prior concepts to prepare students for the upcoming lesson or provide a spiraling review for those students that have not achieved certain objectives. The anticipatory set serves as an attention grabber. It gets the students engaged into the lesson. The objectives and purposes on the lesson plan briefly discusses the relevance of the lesson. Normally, teachers conduct direct instruction within their lesson where the teachers does majority of the talking, such as a lecture. This then transitions to guided practice where there is teacher to student interaction, followed by independent practice where the students may work individually or within their groups. Lastly, there is closure. Within closure, the teacher or students summarizes what they have discussed during the lesson and the teacher usually provides a homework assignment that reinforces the conceptual understanding of the lesson. Being in CU Life has caused me to reevaluate how I will approach my instruction. While I am teaching my students, I plan to incorporate the above mentioned strategies that we learned in the training within my classroom. I plan to become more of a facilitator and allow my students to use strategies based on their prior knowledge when introducing a lesson. When students engage in productive struggle, it will allow the teacher to measure the conceptual understanding of the students and will also allow the students to view their metacognitive strategies. The content presented in my instruction will be as relatable as possible to the

students so that they are able to comprehend the content well. I look forward to continuing my experience in the CU Life Program to enhance my instructional strategies to assist my students in becoming successful.