Last week I had my second observation from my field instructor.
It was a little nerve wracking since I was teaching a math lesson and it was only the second time I had ever taught math to my students. That combined with the fact that the material of the lesson was new to the kids, and fairly complex at that, made me worried.
As it turns out, things went fine and the kids did better than I had expected, although there were certainly some who could use some more work. I stuck with the script from the teacher's manual and threw in a little something of my own to try to provide a different type of example of the "finding a fraction of a fraction" concept we were working on.
But the whole thing got me thinking about how the lesson was scripted in the book. After teaching the number heavy lesson, I began to wonder if this wouldn't be better taught in more of an inquiry style. The lesson jumped headlong into numbers on the board, with little chance to elicit kids ideas on how to solve the problems, or even how they thought one would go about taking a smaller piece out of those already small pieces that are fractions.
While reflecting on the lesson with my field instructor I was struck by how much more transparent the concept could have been using manipulatives and letting the students explore the ideas, then share out their thinking. I started thinking of ways this, or other less number intensive methods would have allowed me to incorporate the Math Talk we have been working with in class as means of bringing my students ideas out into the open.
By using some of those strategies as entry point, my kids who are struggling with the concepts of fractions in general would have been able to make some connections in their own way and this whole lesson would have perhaps clicked for them. By leaping into numbers right away I may have limited their ways of seeing and learning how to approach this concept of multiplying fractions.
I have written in the past about how I feel manipulatives should be so much more than a recovery tool. Now I am adding using talk moves to elicit my kids ideas to that list of important math tools. As I move forward in my teaching practice I want to be able to take what the book gives me and put in as many of those all important pieces such as Math Talk and manipulatives in order to better meet the needs of all of my students.
