Field Experience Essay

Legacy Traditional School strives to build “…motivated students with the opportunity to achieve academic excellence in an accelerated, back-to-basics, safe learning environment taught by caring, knowledgeable and highly effective educators in cooperation with supportive, involved parents.” Teaching in an elite school such as this calls for a sense of respect that needs to be earned. Standing before the group of students made me a tad anxious, but once I started, I felt prepared for what I was doing. By looking into how I taught a lesson that incorporated real life examples as well as communication amongst many parties, one can see what I have learned through this field experience for my future classroom.

Application to Real-World Problems

After talking to the teacher, the lesson was based around a three group-three teacher review. Each student had learned throughout the week the different methods and tasks that go into fractions. On Friday, the lesson was a review over the different parts they learned. The groups were evenly distributed based on ability. Each group worked with a different teacher through a worksheet which included fractions, algebra and real world application. The materials needed for the lesson included expo markers, whiteboards, the worksheet and erasers. The teacher would read the problem, the students would spend five minutes working on the problem, and then they would discuss the answer. As the teacher, I would ask one person to explain the steps they took to answer the problem. Then the rest of the group would repeat the answer as a whole. The students would mentor each other to help each student understand the problem. Not only would they learn the steps, but they are seeing how this form of math is seen in the real world as well as on paper. They discuss where they may have seen this as well as answer the correct answer to the problem. Throughout the lesson, I would calculate how many students got the answers correct and incorrect. This would act as the summative assessment. Each student will get a check by their name if they get it right and an x if they get it wrong for each question. This assessment will tell

They are challenged to communicate their understanding to the teacher. They are asked to explain and decipher for their peers. They ask deeper questions to motivate their peers to describe their points of view. In this lesson specifically, only one student got the third question correct. I asked him to describe step for step what he did to the class. Each student watched as he moved across his whiteboard to explain the problem. One of the students spoke up asking why he did that step the way he did. His response was clear and concise in a way I would not have thought of. This point of view was understandable for his peer when mine was not. There was another problem where the students needed further instruction. The problem asked the students to find the common factors between 32 and 24. The students were all confused and on different pages, so I showed them the rainbow strategy. After, they were able to line up the same numbers to find the common factors. The visual showed the students better than my definitions or descriptions could. This experience showed me how different students need different forms of learning, but once you find that, they can be