I am fortunate in that I see math most of the days I am in field, but because I am placed at a Montessori school the way math is integrated in the classroom is a bit different than what might be seen as most other schools. There is no specific portion of time set aside for math each day, but instead the students are free the pick the work they do. As you can imagine, in a Kindergarten class this can be a bit problematic because the students who don't feel comfortable working with the math materials tend to shy away from them. There are a handful of students who come to school excited to do more math activities with the teacher, but there are also a handful of students who I have never seen working with a single math related activity. In a class of 25, the teacher only has so much time to work one-on-one with each student (there are no group lessons in a Montessori school), so many of the students are falling behind with their numbers and simple math concepts because they are not given time with the teacher. Just how much some students are struggling in math has become very apparent since the last report card testing, so the teacher has been trying to make it more of a priority to include math in their daily activities. This worries me because it is half way through the year and some of the students can't even count to five, while others are learning simple addition and subtraction problems.
I think a big part of math has to do with how confident a student feels in actually doing math, and if some of these students who are moving on to first grade are already starting to fall behind, I worry that they will develop negative feelings toward the subject. In Denise Cantlon's article she mentioned multiple ways of authentically assessing her students. In my field placement specifically, I think the students would really benefit from having those ongoing assessment strategies available to them. Right now, testing is just done at the end of every marking period so my MT is just realizing how much some students are struggling and they are already half way through the year. If she did ongoing assessments through observations, conversations, and games she may be able to help some students sooner rather than later.
Like Catlin, I too am fortunate to see math often, since my MT teaches it everyday in the mornings, and I go into her classroom at least once a week in the morning. Unfortunately I was not able to witness any math instruction this week due to the end of the marking period. Although I have administered a fair amount of assessments to the students and I’ve noticed that the kids give up fairly easy on problems they do not understand. None of the assessments I have given the students individually have been timed but if they are unsure how to answer they won’t even attempt it. I also agree that the confidence a teacher instills in his or her students is so imperative. My MT is constantly given positive feedback to the students, and she never rushes them along, so it is interesting that when it comes to assessment time many of them don’t even want to try.
ReplyDeleteIn Denise Cantlon’s article she mentioned the importance of student notebooks. The classroom I have been placed at doesn’t use this tool however; my MT does incorporate assignments that allow students to reflect. Usually, the assessments consist of a few basic questions with spaced provided for them to draw a picture and write out a response. This allows the students to show their thought process in a couple different ways. Many times I have noticed that the pictures definitely enhance their answers, since many of the students have trouble writing legibly. I think an ongoing notebook would be great as well because then it would be easy to see how the students are truly feeling throughout the year. I don’t think they are asked that often why they struggle with a particular topic. I think they just shy away from problems that are too challenging.
I was fortunate to have seen a lot of math in my placement last semester. After they ate breakfast, the students would work at math stations and then as a whole class they would work on counting. Part of the way through the year my MT had the start counting books. This was a booklet that she put together and then she gave them instructions for each page and how many blocks to color and draw. This seemed like no problem for some students, but others struggled. At the time I was unsure if they just didn't know how to count or if they just didn't care about the assignment. This past week, I was able to help my teacher give her report card assessments and I found out more about my students' abilities.
ReplyDeleteWhen giving the assessments, it was evident that there was a WIDE range of abilities within the class. The assessment was to put number cards in order from 0-20. A few students did very well with the whole thing, some got 0-10 no problem but then struggled with 11-20, and some students simply put the cards in the order that they were given in. I feel like this could have been avoided if my MT had some sort of math notebook to track the progress of her students rather then finding out now that many students are failing. After giving the assessment, I was unfortunate to hear from my MT that some of the students will be repeating kindergarten because they can't count and put their numbers in order. This was hard for me to hear because I could see that with some more simple instructions some of the students would easily be able to pass on to the first grade.