11/11 - The Story of Graphs

Finally, at my Dyad, I was able to teach.

I taught a lesson on having data and having the students pick one of six graphs that would fit the given data. They could even draw a graph if they felt it would match their story better.

The first period that I taught this lesson was a bit rough. 36 highly gifted fifth and sixth grade students doing seventh grade math is pretty intimidating. I felt I struggled a bit with my introductory review of labeling graphs. I made a quick graph on the board, which needed to be gone over. We were also on an assembly schedule, and I lost 10 minutes of time due to the new schedule, so I was barely able to go over the student’s choices and explanations of their graphs. The kicker was that this period is the one I was being observed for.

After the assembly, I taught this same lesson to the gifted sixth graders in second period. Everything I felt I screwed up in first period I had corrected now. I did the first problem with them to illustrate exactly what I was looking for in an answer. During their work, I assigned kids to come to the board to do a particular question, thus giving them enough time to get to that problem and work it out. I had those kids explain to the class what they did and I was able to ask if anyone came up with their own graphs. And most importantly, I had managed to have the student’s take the lesson further by having them draw a graph about change in their life and see if their neighbor can guess what it is about. Some of the girls got too excited and began telling their group what the title of their graph was as they drew it, because their concept was hilarious and they needed to share.

I met with my observer after the lesson and he was impressed with my confidence in front of the students. He was happy to see my roam around the room and interact with all the kids. When he felt the classroom was distracted, I was able to intuitively come to the same conclusion within a minute or so according to his notes. When I told him how I felt the lesson went and what changes I made to it for second period, he was happy that I could make the adjustments that I thought were needed.

This was a fantastic experience. I can’t wait to do it again next week.