Section 4 Reflection

          While reading through chapter 14, goals in the classroom, I was reminded of HPI, especially the professional HPI practitioner. The memorization of math facts is a problem to overcome every year! In my classroom, we set weekly goals for our math facts practice. These goals are completely individualized to each student. For some students, if this was just a classroom goal that everyone had to meet, the pressure would cause this student to completely miss the purpose of the activity, which would be to learn the math facts. I would play the role of the performance consultant and meet with the students to set goals and motivate. I also do goals on our benchmarks we take every six weeks. This has been very beneficial because students thrive on challenges. It is also a great visual for students to see their goal on their chart and what they actually scored.

         

          Performance support is a way to help support workers or, in my case, students and teachers in areas of difficulty. Performance support is something I do every day in the classroom through my guided math instruction. Each week, we work on different skills and the students’ performance determines what group they are in and what skills we are going to build and grow. For the students who excelled with that skill, I would extend that skill. For students who were still having trouble with the skills, I would give extra practice and help so those students would be successful. With the math facts goals I addressed above, performance support really helps those students who are having trouble reaching their goal realize that it is attainable. It can be as simple as creating flashcards to practice facts with or the use of manipulatives such as number lines.

        

  

          At my district, we are very data driven. Every six weeks the students take a benchmark which is then put into the computer using Eduphoria. First, we look at the overall grade level percentages for each skill. We share ideas and examples from our own classrooms that worked for the skills. Next, we take our own classroom and breakdown our own data. I look at what skills were successful overall, then I breakdown those skills where we can improve. Some skills need to be retaught to the whole class. Others just need to be addressed with a small group of students. Seeing this data and analyzing down to the student level helps me see where I need to improve as well. For the problem I encounter each year with math facts, I am able to breakdown each question where math facts were needed and look at what answer the student picked. This is very beneficial because I can see where the mistake was made. Did they pick the wrong operation or was it a computation error? This information is very beneficial and helps me address the problem with the student.

   

          Student discovery is a great way to get students communicating and learning. During our shapes lesson, I instructed the students to come up with their own definition of a polygon. I gave them different examples and non-examples to create their own definition. I gave each example one at a time to build on the others, and it was a lot of fun to see the groups work together to change what they thought was the correct definition. I think this knowledge could have been learned either in an informal or formal learning experience, but through the discovery the students got a deeper understanding of what a polygon is. Also, the students’ math vocabulary grew and they were able to tell me why or why not a shape was a polygon. Informal learning is a great instructional strategy to use in the classroom, but for some students I have seen this become frustrating because they just want to know the information.