Week 5 Reflection

For me this week, my biggest eye-opener was parent-teacher conferences. In most of my education courses at the university, I have heard horror stories about parent-teacher conferences. However, my first experience was not that bad. Yes, there were a few parents that were not as approachable as others, but there were no horrifying experiences that occurred that would discourage me to speak up or fear telling the parent something that may be a shock, or worrisome to them about their child. Regarding conferences, I also learned that the preparation for parent-teacher conferences can take up a lot of your time. My host-teacher prepared a conference sheet for herself so that it would guide her in her conversation with the parents. This is definitely a technique I am going to try in my future teaching career because it is something that will allow me to remember everything that I need to say, and it will also help me concentrate on what is important for the parents to hear. It also helps serve as a form of parent communication which is important.

Overall, this week was not so bad. Yes, there were several behavior issues and some challenging moments, but I always take it with a grain of salt and continue to keep on teaching. My own personal patience is building every day, and I continue to try to learn how to connect to my first graders. However, I have discovered this year that I can connect more with the upper elementary students than I can with the younger ones. I absolutely love and adore all 19 of the students, but as far as content and teaching methods go, I have discovered that my comfort level and my own lesson planning abilities relate more to 3rd through 5th grade. It has been very difficult for me to think of how to teach a lesson or even go over a simple worksheet. Since most of my time at Mason-Dixon has been spent in the upper elementary classrooms, this part of teaching has been a very difficult transition to make, however it is slowly getting easier and I am learning to automatically think this way as I am instructing the students.

This Friday, I managed to start my action research with my students. I am conducting a study on using Touch Math with students who struggle with math. I was very pleased with how the first day went with my group of 7 students. They picked up on the method quite well, and they seemed to be excited about trying out something new. I am very anxious to see how this study goes over the course of the next 5-6 weeks. And I am even more anxious to see how this method of math affects the understanding of these students once addition and subtraction are introduced.