Demonstration of Advanced Practice

MIAA 320

Connie S. Costa

December 12, 2013

Molly Johnson
































The shift from state standards to common core standards isnt going to be easy.
And, the difficulty doesnt come just from the new alignments and standards. It trickles
down to the classroom teachers, especially those like myself who have been teaching in
the era of directed teaching. Ive been in the classroom for nine years and during that
time, my curriculum was directly tied to NCLB and district pacing guides. It was drill
and kill until state testing in April, after which, students checked out until the last day of
school.
With common core standards, I, as the classroom teacher will be responsible for
creating the lessons that foster a completely new style of teaching and learning. A major
part of this change will come from the types of questions I ask during my lessons. These
essential questions will facilitate discourse among my students, and the strategies
implemented by me will drive my students to become more collaborative and engaged in
the lessons, thereby helping them develop a deeper sense of knowledge regarding the
math concepts begin taught. This course, MIAA 320, has helped give me a solid jumping
off point to reach my goals.
To create lessons with a focus on well-worded questions, it is important that I am
prepared for my daily lessons. I found a very good common core lesson plan template
that I used for one of my lessons this past month. It was very thorough and included a
specific area for essential questions created by me. By having these questions ready, I had
more confidence and was able to promote more discourse between my students and keep
them engaged in the lesson.


Another component of creating student discourse is by managing my students in a
way that promotes collaboration. To do this, I spent a several hours looking at my
students ability levels, personalities, and behaviors one afternoon after school. What
resulted was a class set-up that I feel is a very good room arrangement. I grouped my
students into small groups of two and three. This room set-up allows my students to work
together collaboratively and engage in conversation easily.
Due to the room arrangement mentioned above, I am now able to move about our
room more freely. This has allowed me to have more meaningful interaction with my
students, which lends itself to me being able to practice my questioning techniques and it
also allows me to make quick informal assessments. This room arrangement can be seen
in the video I posted in my Prezi presentation.
I believe that because of my participation in this class, I have gained so much
knowledge in the area of creating and delivering essential questions. Am I an expert
now? Not by a long shot! I still have so much to learn, however, the knowledge I have
gained during my participation in this course, has helped me to realize the importance of
good questioning techniques and strategies. And, how good essential questions can
promote mathematical discourse and collaboration in the classroom, at all grade levels. It
is my goal to continue to learn and become more confident as a math teacher so that my
students come away from my class with a positive attitude towards math and better
understanding of the concepts being taught.




I also have another goal, and it is one directly tied to a quote from the article The
Talking Cure: Teaching Mathematical Discourse by Marsha Ratzel. In the article she
states, My classroom is becoming more like the collaborative, challenging work
environments my students will face in the future whether or not their careers have
anything to do with math. If I can create a classroom environment like this, then I will
consider myself a success!