Hello all, I am a student teacher in Texas teaching 3rd grade math. I never liked math, and would've never considered it before this placement, but it's worked out alright so far and has pushed me! I am going into my 9th week, and have taken over one class a day, on all my formal observations from my supervisor, I have gotten exceptionally high scores, and my mentor teacher gives me feedback such as "work on classroom management," stuff that is typical for student teachers. What I am worried about is that I am not teaching well. I did a lesson yesterday and today they took a quiz over it and failed. It was a tough topic to cover and we only spent a day on it, but I felt like I taught it poorly. This happened one other time when i was about 4 weeks into my placement, I taught every class for the whole week (alone) and the students ended up failing the topic we spent a whole week on. Is this normal for student teachers? Does it take a bit to develop really solid teaching skills that the students understand? My mentor teacher is young, but is an amazing teacher and makes it all look so easy. I didn't think it would be this hard! Thank you all!
How do they do on other topics? I've found that even after 26 years, sometimes lessons just don't go as I planned. And some classes will just get a lesson easier than another group does. Keep looking for patterns. That's the best way to tell.
We have been doing area and perimeter, and the class I taught did fairly well on those quizzes. They struggled on the quiz over the material I taught yesterday though, we had only gone over it for one day, which I'm kind of thinking is the issue.
I think that one day is a very short amount of time for a topic like area and perimeter! I would recommend planning out units with your mentor who should help give you an idea of how long each unit should take and what sequence you should teach topics in. I give exit tickets about 3 times a week. They are useful for helping you understand student misconceptions so you can address them in the next lesson. I usually don't give my kids a quiz or test until we have spent about 1-2 weeks on a topic.
I agree! I like the idea about exit tickets and agree on not giving a quiz or test until you've spent a good amount of time on the topic, but my teacher is very quick and experienced and pretty much blows through topics, and never gives exit tickets or anything like that, and all the kids do well or so it seems. Then I teach it and I feel like students get it during the lesson, then when it comes independently they struggle. I am going to start discussing with my teacher the idea of exit tickets every day or every couple of days. Thank you for your help!
My exit tickets usually take about 5 minutes. It is a good way to end class and a good routine for my students. (I know that elementary school is different though!) Do you have a curriculum? I teach a new lesson every day (and a lot of times, it's the same topic, but I build on the previous day.) I teach older kids (6th grade) but my students are not ready for a quiz until about 3-4 days of instruction.
We typically teacher a new lesson everyday, building on the previous topic from the day before, but we literally go SO FAST through everything. Yesterday we did telling time, today we did elapsed time (just jumped into it on a number line) and tomorrow we are doing subtracting elapsed time just doing regular subtraction, and subtracting elapsed time on a number line (all in the same day) does this seem normal? Then we take a quiz on thursday. Do you feel like this is enough time for this topic?
It is something normal, I think. Or better to say - natural. Maybe it was just a hard college topic or equation or data for them. I know a student teacher who uses https://edubirdie.com/buy-college-essays in order to get efficient methods of explanation to students concerning any theme in any domain - science, literature, or history. You have to understand, to buy college essays and "buy" patience, and don't give up! It is important; because who said that it would be easy. Nothing is easy ...
I have taught area and perimeter to 3rd graders for years. If I did it only one day, I would get much failure as well. It requires more time than this. When you get your own classroom, I suggest more time and to check for understanding during the lesson as czacza mentioned. Fred Jones, "Tools For Teaching" book has excellent techniques on how to do this. I don't accept a class failing any math content area. If they don't get it, I spend more days teaching it and explaining it until I get a high percent of mastery. IMO it is better to teach 10 concepts and have the students know them, then teach 15 concepts and have them know none of them-especially in math.
