Week 5

        This week has been quite eventful compared to the past few.  On Monday and Tuesday my partner and I had to deal with a lot of behavior problems.  The upside about that was that it gave us an insight on the "not so glorious side of teaching" which was good for us to experience.  It gave us the opportunities to figure out how to handle different situations and issues.
        After reading "Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom" on differentiated instruction, I was able to connect it with my classroom and students.  Differentiation is a classroom practice with a balanced emphasis on individual students and course content.  On Monday, they were learning about "double borrowing" in three digit subtraction.  For example, 403 - 159 = ? where the students have to borrow from the "4" and "turn the 0 into a 9" and then "turn the 3 into a 13".  The students were extremely confused and there was not enough time to truly explain what they are doing when they do that.  There was no time to differentiate the lesson so our mentor teacher just had us teach the students the "rules" which was, of course, still very confusing.
        Lindsey and I were able to teach our Pathwise lesson plan this week and it did not go that smoothly.  We eventually had to break the class into groups for an activity and we broke them up based on their reading levels and behavior.  The students' desks are set up to where there is rarely ever any group work being done so I do not think they were ever taught how to work in a group which our activity very difficult to get through.  One thing that our reading mentioned about differentiated instruction is that you have to be flexible and we definitely were flexible in this lesson.  We had to continue to scaffold certain students that were still having a difficult time and managing groups that did not seem to work well together.  Overall, I think this lesson provided us with a lot of information and insight on how our students work and what they need to work on socially.
        Weekly wondering:  When and how can I provide the knowledge and experience for my students so they will know how to be more successful in collaborative groups?