Observation One

The following blogs will not have different dates from today's because I wrote my observations a LONG time ago but now I'm "blogging" them!

February 22,

Today was a very interesting visit. I saw how math can be incorporated into a history lesson and how to teach a sensitive era, Civil Rights, to very young children effectively. I really liked how she taught "carrying" and "subtraction" through addition knowledge. The teacher asked how old would a person be if they were born in 1732 today? Our teacher began with a simple problem 2 +__ = 10. Then she stepped it up, writing 32 +___ = 40 asking what number added to 32 will give you 40 and told them put big number in their head and count on until they get to 40 (33,34,35,etc.) She continued this process of step by step using simple math and addition facts to get 275 years old. Also I really liked how the classroom supported this problem, she asked the students to look around the class to find out who was born in 1732. She constructed a time line to support the segments of the Civil Rights video, each clip had a few sentences summarizes information learned and a space on top for the students to illustrate their knowledge. She informed me that she placed an already made example in front of the class and explained the video clip/words on their story segment to support students whose literary skills were low and others who were lost with the content.. This exercise was a great way to reinforce the information they had learned previously about key American leaders. However I did not understand why she was so hard on certain students for their coloring. She would scold kids if they colored a person's face purple or drew stick figures. I felt bad because I probably would've gotten in a lot of trouble if I were in her class for the fact that I could not draw well.