Wednesday, February 3, 2010

January Reflection

As I look back at the month of January I am left with that familiar feeling wondering where it went. It seems like yesterday we were celebrating the holidays and new years and now we are on the final stretch to CSAP. Although this month flew by, I feel like I am continually making strides and improving in my ability to provide a variety of methods to teach different concepts. I just had my students complete another glogster project where they had to represent the different transformations that we had learned about. I really enjoyed having them complete this project because it allowed me to see who understood what as well as what I needed to review further.

Also, as we progress through the year I have seen the students become more comfortable using the technology. I remember the first glogster project we did and it felt like I was being pulled in every direction trying to provide assistance to everyone; however, during the last glogster activity very few students required my help and in fact any problems that we did encounter we worked through them together. I feel like as adults we are scared to try new things sometimes, but it seems like kids are always willing to try something new and many of them do not have any fear about failing. It is this attitude that makes students good problem solvers which in turn benefits everyone as we all learn of new ways to do things.

Lastly, during the month of January we had our parent teacher conferences which gave me an opportunity to reintroduce my classroom website to my students parents. In the beginning of the year I went through my website with my students and I sent home information for the parents; however, from many of the parents reactions it seemed like many of them didn't know about it. Therefore, I took advantage of our conferences to remind parents about it as well as to show them how they can use it to monitor their kids progress. Needless to say, this made the parents happy while many of the students were not!

2 comments:

Kelly Berry said...

I am totally scared to release my kids into their projects! On the other hand, the motivation makes it worth every minute. This time of year definitely makes technology integration easier.

Joseph Miller said...

Tom,

Awesome! Sounds like you are getting comfortable and the students are too. You should share some of the projects and the website here. I am sure the rest of su would benefit from seeing your work.

I loved the comment on not being afraid to fail. I had a professor that drilled into to my head that unless you try something and fail you never learn anything new. It was so drilled into me that when I first started writing computer code in early 2000 I never trusted any syntax that worked the first time. Do you think this same principle applies to math?