Short Practicum Stories

Story #1:

Story number one begins with food. On our first day at Prince of Wales, the admins for the school went to great effort to organize an orientation for all of the student teachers. This included a catered breakfast and lunch during which time, we all got to meet our sponsor teachers. This sort of a welcoming atmosphere was awesome considering that many of us were completely nervous, and we had no clear idea of what to expect.

Story #2:

After the orientation day, we (the student teachers) were encouraged to go around and start observing classes. The first one I watched was a Math 9 class which was being taught by one of my sponsors. She had a tablet laptop with a customized worksheet uploaded, and she was modifying it in real time as the students took notes on their own personal copies. I thought this was just about the coolest thing possible, short of having my own smart board. The next week, I actually taught the same class using a set of notes that I had prepared. Although I was nervous for the first few minutes, I successfully hid my fear, and It went pretty well overall.

Group Micro-Teaching: Feedback and Reflection

Peer Feedback:

After reviewing the peer feedback forms from our micro-teaching activity, I found the general sentiment to be fairly positive. Most of the marks were in the 3-4 range with some above and some below. What I found most beneficial (and also most frustrating) were the written comments. Many of the comments indicated that the pacing of the lesson was too fast, and that more time needed to be spent on explication, especially with respect to development of the summation formula for the geometric series. After reflecting on the exercise, I do agree with this judgment, but I have some reservations which I will elaborate on in the full reflection to follow.

Reflection:

While I enjoyed working with my partners on this activity, I found some aspects of it to be somewhat frustrating. The most challenging obstacles for me were the division of labour during the delivery of the lesson, and the fifteen minute time constraint. With regard to the partitioning of the lesson material, I feel like too much time was spent on the introductory portion. As a result, I felt pressured to race through the main body of the lesson, and there was not enough time left for the experimental activity. This was fairly aggravating for me, as I had put quite a bit of thought into coming up with an interesting lesson plan which incorporated all of the elements required by the assignment. With better preparation and communication with the other members of my team, I feel that this difficulty could have been avoided, or at least minimized. The second main challenge I encountered with this assignment was trying to find a way to accomplish all of the goals of the lesson within the allotted time frame. In the end, it turned out to be impossible to do, and we had to scrap the independent problem-solving activity. While I found this to be slightly exasperating, I also found it to be a useful experience. I learned that it is necessary to be flexible in my teaching practices, and to ‘roll with the punches.’ Circumstances will rarely behave exactly as they are expected to. Thus, it is vital to be aware of this and to be able to adapt one’s strategies accordingly.

Zero Division Poem: Reflection

I was away from class on the day this exercise was assigned, and so I found out about it from my classmates the following Friday. My gut reaction upon hearing about it was something along the lines of: “Seriously? We have to write poetry? This is going to be lame.” I would describe my attitude as being slightly hostile. However, I soon began tossing around ideas, and I kept coming back to the metaphor of black holes, and tears in the fabric of reality. Also, I had been listening to a lot of music by a Swedish math-metal band called Meshuggah, and much of their lyrics deal with concepts like transcendence, insanity and the altering of consciousness. I then mixed these influences together and came up with the idea of zero division as an operation which is so powerful that it can tear the mind apart. Attempting to incorporate imagery was challenging, so I tried to convey the idea of a vortex by using sentence and line structure which got progressively shorter and more abrupt. After writing a few rough drafts, I realized that I was actually getting into the activity, and I really started to enjoy it. As a teaching exercise, I thought it was quite interesting, as it forced me to get very meta-cognitive. I really had to think about how to describe zero division and its relationship to the concept of ‘infinity’ in a very qualitative way. I think this could be an interesting activity to incorporate into a math class, especially to supplement the study of topics like asymptotic behaviour of functions. In the end, I found the experience to be quite rewarding and useful.

2 Column Problem Solving - Polygonal Numbers

They posted in reverse, so start reading from the bottom :)

Singularity

Wrenched. Hurtling through space and beyond the event horizon.
Titanic forces compress and rend thought.
Nothing splits my mind as I
Spiral ever deeper.
The Terminus approaches.
Faster, now.
Spinning.
The Crushing Vortex
Annihilates reality.
Oblivion gives
birth t
o the
inf
in
it
e
.