Artifact #2

Artifact #2 - Teaching Math - Reflective Practice 

TEP believes that educators must engage in reflective practice. Reflective practice is the ability to reflect in a thoughtful way on the significance of different teaching situations and on their role in defining a learning environment. Educators must demonstrate self-knowledge by openly identifying personal biases and projections. Reflective practice, guided by the principles of self-evaluation and self-directed learning, is considered the foundation of continuous professional growth.

Making mistakes is a big part of life, and as such we cannot expect ourselves to be perfect.  Teaching is no exception to this, however when we teach a lesson, plan a unit or go over something new with our students it is important that we learn from our students so that we, in turn, can help them learn better.  Being a reflective practitioner is one the best ways we can model for our students a love of learning and improving ourselves in order to do our best.  A reflective teacher is inspirational because it means that they pay attention to the things around them when they are teaching and if something does not go the way they wanted it to they will not rest until they can do it better.  Ultimately, being a reflective teacher means doing better for us, for students and for our profession, a sort of fine-tuning over time. 

            During my practicum I taught a Math unit on multiplication.  My first two lessons in the unit were fairly unsuccessful; I panicked and ended up doing a lecture style lesson that was completely unsuited for my students and did not give them a chance to explore learning on their own.  After getting a lot of feed back at the beginning of the unit I was able to fine-tune my lessons.  Towards the end I reflected on a lot of little details such as manipulatives, groups and so much more. I was able to transform my Math teaching from a style that benefited none of my students to one that benefited almost all of them.  I moved into a style that had differentiated groups to help progress students, aspects that pushed students that needed extensions and met the learning needs of visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners in my classroom.