Reflections

This has been an awesome experience. Teaching in the fifth grade (and any grade) is very
challenging. At this level and above, the students are greater thinkers and have learned to link
important information. Their schemas of experiences are beginning to formulate into permanent
belief systems. So as a teacher, you have to be on the ball and know your stuff because your
students will catch the mistakes confront you about it. Teaching math is even more demanding
because the process are the same and the results are universal. This chapter has been a great
chapter to teach the students from start to finish.
Being able to see the results of my ability to teach has been the most important thought
on my mind. So you can imagine my excitement when there was such a high rate of success in
the students after the summative assessment was graded. To put it all on charts and look at the
data has been very pleasing.
One of the important steps that helped me link math to real life experiences was to draw
on personal experiences from both my childhood and as a grown up in which math became an
essential part of life. Much of developing back-ground knowledge came from helping the
students identify in their own lives where they had to make decisions based on numbers, for
example; to share candy; pizza; gum; and crayons.
A great tool that the My Math program offers is supportive teaching material via a
SMART board program. If that is not available then the use of a Power Point presentation would
be possible with a little work. In my case I utilized the SMART board presentation. This offered
both explicit teaching and student participation through at the board manipulations. As advanced
as this is, McGraw-Hill also kept in mind those schools that may not be electronically equipped,

thus offering a sort of "play-by-play" teaching presentation. All of it written out. During the
course of my lessons, I also used this information because it made sense and kept everything
organized. As I strived to use personal experiences, I found that the lesson as written for each
lesson had some great points that helped me to draw on my own memories and on the
experiences of my students.
This math chapter or unit was not my first choice. I had initially submitted a Social
Studies unit on American Government. My mentor teacher agreed that this would be great as she
had not yet done any Social Studies at all since school started. However, after giving a pre-test
and the first two lessons of the unit, it was determined that because SAGE testing was coming,
Science had to be a priority and time had to be allocated to getting the students ready for Science
testing. Social Studies was put on hold until after SAGE testing in May.
As a result, all of the data that I had collected was now unusable. I had fortunately begun
collecting data on Chapter 10 of the My Math unit that I had been teaching. In order to make this
TWS work I needed to write a unit plan and six lessons and finish collecting data (the post-test)
for math. The lessons presented in this report and unit plan are therefore written after I had
collected all the data (pre and post test) of chapter 10 in the math curriculum.
Aside from the additional work to make this TWS presentable, I found that I truly
enjoyed teaching math. I felt very confident in my abilities to teach the concepts that the CCSS
required the students to know. One of the greatest factors to my success was that I had a great
mentor who was willing to help me think through some of the teaching stumbling blocks that I
encountered and also played as a tag teamer with me as we taught a concept that we felt the
students were struggling with. This lesson strategy actually became a lesson style for several
other teachers that were encountering the same issues with their students.

One of the important beliefs that I hold dear concerning my students is that they will want
to be in my classroom because they feel both safe, and appreciated. I know that a child that feels
like they won't be laughed at because of answering a question wrong is more open to participate.
My class is also about fairness. Students understand that not all children are alike and that some
need to wear glasses and some won't or can't. This principle refers to each of our needs, therefore
students know that because someone gets to sit by the teacher doesn't mean they are like more
than another.
My class also has a high expectation of the students work ethic and treatment of others.
As a class we monitor our emotions together and are willing to make adjustments to increase the
level of positive emotions and decrease the levels of negative ones. Hitting is never allowed, and
praising one another is always allowed. I firmly believe that discipline is purely emotional and
my purpose is to identify the inappropriate behavior. One of the ways that I know works to
identify the behavior is to come down to the students level by speaking with them eye to eye.
Encouraging and inviting them to come down to a passive level physically by sitting on the floor
or at a table to talk about the behavior and the consequences if needed.
Staying in touch with my class during lessons is one of the strategies that I am currently
working on. It is easy to get involved in a lesson and have the desired participation and not
"make the rounds" through your class. I've learned that I need to keep a third eye and ear open.
As I make notes to myself to take proximity walks around a room I know that I will be able to
keep them better focused and engaged. Currently it is not too bad but this is because I have such
a great class, but it could be better. One of my biggest negatives is that when I am not prepared I
will turn my back on my students to write or fix something and that split second of lost eye
contact will often times take ten minutes to fix.

During the course of the chapter and teaching the lessons (there were 13 plus a review) I
can see the importance of hitting all of the points required to meet the CCSS. One of the points
that I may have overlooked in the review cost several students the ability to make an informed
decision, and so they may have had to guess on the answer. A way that I will remedy this is to
continue to keep an organized plan to review the information the students need to remember.
This plan will include all of the important strategies and processes they need rather than what I
think they need to be reminded of. In essence I will go over everything like poking a cake to
make sure it is all being retained.
The data that was collected gave me more information about my ability to teach then I
had expected. This was my first real self-evaluation of my pedagogy during the course of a
whole chapter or unit. The only drawback was that it was not my initial subject matter of choice
to collect data on and write the TWS about. I am confident however, that I was able to complete
my assignment in light of the set-backs. Also, it was a positive affirmation that the stresses that I
was going through with school was not affecting my ability to provide meaningful and
differentiated lessons to my students.
Finally, one of the most important resources that I can have to provide a safe learning
environment is my ability to create authentic and lasting relationships with my students. I feel
these past several months have given me a look into the working minds of fifth-graders. From
their social interactions at school and with me and what they bring to school from home. More
than anything these past five years at DSU, I will miss the students from my very first teaching
assignment, before I even became a teacher, and was still a student too. I feel that I was
completely vested in these students and as a result, I taught the best I have ever taught before.