On or Off?

Reflection

This Learning Experience is a modification of the first version developed for the class EDU 327 Teaching to the Standards at Daemen College. I was and still am teaching second grade for Buffalo Public Schools Early Childhood Center #61, which is an urban public school. This is my fifth year teaching and it is my third year teaching at this grade level. Approximately two years ago, Buffalo Public Schools adopted a math program called “Investigations” by Scotts Foresman. This program is activity and game based. The program consists of month long investigations focusing on concepts in the New York State Math curriculum.

This Learning Experience was developed to support the districts math program by supporting the “Choice Time” period of the daily schedule. “Choice Time” is a time in the daily schedule that students choose a game to play with a small group of students. The students usually have the choice between two to three games. This learning experience did not involve any other games because it was meant to be an introductory lesson for students to learn how to play the game so they can eventually play the game independently during “Choice Time”. The Learning Experience was also developed to support the New York State Math Science Technology Standard 3 (Problem Solving Strand, Representation Strand, and Reasoning and Proof Strand).

Based on the class summary sheet, I feel that by teaching the Learning Experience I was able meet my objective for the students to understand be able to write number sentences for the bases of ten. I feel I was also able to meet my objective of having the students explain different strategies they could use to check their number sentences.

This learning experience will be review by members of the Summer (2007) MST Program using the peer review process. I feel this revised version of the learning experience will be giving both warm and cool feedback by my peers. My goal is to post my learning experience on the MST website to be viewed by this September and to be presented in front of many other peer review panels. The final goal is to have this Learning Experience or another version appear on the NYS Department of Education Website.

This Learning Experience helps prepare students with all addition and subtraction related problems that they will encounter in life. They will use the bases of ten when working with money, time, measurement, and fractions.

John Dewey, a well known philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, once said, “Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” I believe this Learning Experience supports this philosophy that students need to be socially engaged in the learning process in order to have true understanding in the concepts being taught. I feel that having my students actively working on a game together with their peers, will encourage them to learn from each other and in turn gain a higher level of understanding for the concepts.

The focus question for this Learning Experience is, “Are the rubric assessments aligned to the congruency table?” What I’m looking for is to ensure that my assessment tools match the NYS Standard I am trying to address in this Learning Experience.