Hello again, blog… now for this week’s edition of Practicum, brought to you by the Social-Emotional Learning cohort!  This post will include more introspection-related musings, so bear with me… the initial post is for my own reference (to provide context), and the meat of this entry will appear after all the stars.

* * *

Today’s task is to teach a mini-lesson on long division featuring decimals divided by a whole number, and numbers less than 1 divided by a whole number.  I was fairly confident heading into this lesson, as I have quite a bit of experience with teaching long division — many of my pupils in the past have struggled greatly with this particular fundamental skill.  So, when my SA assigned this to me as a topic, I was excited for an opportunity to reach the entire class with my instruction!

Arriving early, I spent some time discussing my plan for the mini-lesson with my SA.  I had to clarify some of the particular wordings that I had used in describing what I intended (note to self:  clearer language!), and asked her for more input as to how she want the lesson to be taught.  I really appreciate my SA’s attention to detail — she teaches a strongly grounded, step-by-step method that not only guarantees the correct answer but also incorporates the importance of checking one’s answer after calculating.  She had emphasized the importance of instructing the students to write the equation out horizontally first prior to performing any calculations (ie — translating the bracket form into 3.45 / 4 = ).  This step is vital because while some students had issues with placing the decimal after dividing, this simple step of writing the question out horizontally greatly increased decimal placement.  I wrote down some sample questions that I intended to use as models (I’ve run into trouble in the past by not performing this step) and prepared for the lesson…

I typically spend the recess break reviewing my notes and going through the lesson in my head, reminding myself of the key steps and phrases that I wanted to use during the instruction.  Recess that day had been cut short due to several other goals I wished to accomplish (marking the rest of the spelling assignments).  I had instructed the students to take out their note page that was given to them by my SA because I wished to stress the usage of that resource, and intended to go over how to use the notes to guide their questions.

The first moments were spent setting up the projector (do this before the lesson!!), then walking over to turn out the lights.  In the future, I should ask a student to turn off the lights instead of doing it myself.  I launched into the pre-lesson by asking a question, “What is the first two things we need to write down during our test tomorrow?”  After exchanging puzzled looks, a student offered, “Our name and the date?”  Yes, that is correct… but I was looking for the two tools my SA had introduced:  the Place Value Chart and “HMS Bring Down” (how many, multiply, subtract, bring down).  After fumbling around, I finally wrote down the first question.

… and I forgot the most vital step that my SA stressed in the morning:  write the question horizontally before proceeding further.  It was not until the last question that I realized my error and told the class this vital step.  I walked the class through the process of dividing, stressing that dividing decimals by whole numbers consists of two separate goals:  dividing the numbers themselves, and placing the decimals correctly.  I broke down the steps provided according to the two goals:  the initial dividing was to be straightforward, with the estimation process intended to tell us where to put the decimal.  I ran into some issues with the rounding portion — we are supposed to round numbers bigger than 1 to the nearest compatible whole number; I intended to highlight this by reminding students to look for the first set of numbers we divided.  However, the way I phrased this was rather different from what has been previously taught to the students and fortunately my SA stepped in to correct my error and stated the step in very clear language.

The next question went relatively smooth, but because I had fully explained every single step in the first question, I had sped through the division portion and did not model the HMS Bring Down method mentioned at the beginning of the method.  In retrospect, I should have went through this as I had during my instruction of the first question.  The rest of the lesson went relatively smoothly; E, as usual, asked very thoughtful questions, A helped with a few good contributions, and M asked a really good question about how to decide where to put the decimal.

I fumbled M’s question somewhat.  The estimated answer was 1, after rounding the dividend up; she wanted to know whether to place the decimal before (.425) or after (4.25).  After going through the estimating process, I tied the estimated answer back to decimal placing by examining the numbers created by placing the decimals at all the possible locations.  When we got to .425 vs. 4.25, I explained that .425 is the correct answer because “.425 is closer to 1 than 4.25”, which was vague and ungrounded.  My SA offered a much clearer explanation — “when we estimated earlier, we founded the dividend up to get 1.  Therefore, the answer should be smaller than 1.  Where should you put the decimal to get a number smaller than 1?”

Wow.

* * *

I felt that the lesson proceeded very smoothly and devoid of Ums and Uhhs.  That being said, the way in which I taught the lesson brought out a very serious problem:  my SA had instructed me to teach a certain method and I had not done so; to make matters worse, the method I taught was exactly what the students were doing, and what we were attempting to correct.  During the discussion my SA made sure to clearly communicate the importance of that step as well as her reasoning behind the methodology, which I agreed 100% with and said I would teach.  I did not do that.

This, I imagine, is extremely frustrating for my SA, and this is definitely not the first time that something like this had occurred.  My SA always clearly explains the way she marks each kind of assignment, and I always fully understand her instructions and promise to act accordingly.  However, when time comes to actually follow through, I act as though I had not understood because… well, I had not done what was told of me.  This comes across as negligent and perhaps even suggesting a lack of attention due to a lack of care; definitely not an impression I intend to give off, but I cannot deny the fact that my actions reflect that.

I’ve thought long and hard about why this may be the case… one hypothesis is that the steps and things I omit are not what I would normally consider.  For example, for long division, I do not usually write down the equation horizontally before proceeding.  Moving forward, I believe I need to write things down as I am discussing matters with my SA, especially those points that are stressed.  I need to focus less on the big picture, but more on the details… because often it is these small details that have the biggest effect on the success of my instruction.

Forgetting to do things leads to shoddy teaching, and I do not feel that is acceptable.  My SA deserves better, and I definitely expect more of myself.  Hopefully this is the last time that something like this happens.

Ugh.