Today was the first day of my math unit! I am in a fourth grade classroom. Math is the last thing we do in my classroom every day. We have math scheduled from 2:00 to 3:15. The students are done with school and called to get on buses at 3:20. It is an interesting schedule and sometimes leaves students a little tired of school and more interested in other things than math. I am teaching the students first unit on fractions. Since it was my first day of teaching fractions we did some basic things on fractions to make sure we were all starting on the same page. I also worked really hard today to relate fractions to my students’ lives.
I tried to keep norms in mind while I was doing my lesson today. To start off I kept with the norm of doing Math 4 Today. Math 4 Today is a weekly set of homework and class problems. In this class everyday in math we go over 4 of the math questions on the sheet. Students do the first row of problems on Monday during class. Then students do the rest of the rows each night for homework. Then on Friday they take a quiz where they can use their notes from the week. This was part of my students daily schedule that my teacher wanted me to continue to do while I was teaching. I worked hard to stick to the students norms when I was doing it today. I told students to highlight certain things, which is a norm. It is a class strategy to highlight the important parts of math problems so when they work on the test they know what to look for. Then I pulled beans with students’ names on them to do the problems. However, I was there to make sure students did them correctly. I worked hard to make sure the students were successful and learning.
Another important part about norms was I set up some expectations for group work today. I have noticed the students do not do a lot of group work. I wanted to make sure students knew what I expected of them before we started. I told them some of my expectations and I talked to them about what they thought I would expect. These were some expectations and norms that I wanted to establish at the beginning of my time in the classroom. I tend to plan a lot of group work when I am planning my lessons. I talked about how I wanted students to respect each other, discuss, not say you’re wrong, and all people participating. These were things that I know students understand but I thought it was important to talk about. I think it went well today. I did see some students being disrespectful and I think the norms of group is something I am going to review again as I continue teaching. I want to make sure the students know what I expect of them. I think having these norms set will also help with my classroom management. I am excited to continue teaching my unit! I had a good day and I hope I just keep getting better.