{"id":48,"date":"2016-11-04T16:42:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T20:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/eportfolio-sample\/?page_id=48"},"modified":"2017-05-07T16:41:12","modified_gmt":"2017-05-07T20:41:12","slug":"reflection-on-growth","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat16-scramer\/classroom-learning-community\/reflection-on-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflection on Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Numeracy Class<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

My classroom culture in my numeracy class was almost too good to be true until late October when I started to notice students showing a lack of respect for each other and me, as well as some behavior issues. I wrote about this experience in my journal entry on October 31, 2016:<\/p>\n

\u201cLast week I went through a rough patch with my numeracy class. I\u2019m beginning to realize that teaching is a whole lot of ups and downs, and no matter how prepared you are, you just can\u2019t prevent all the downs. When I was discussing the turbulence with Kate, she brought up the fact that this was the first heavily skills-based unit I had taught them without providing any context. She suggested showing them that the math (the distributive property) had a purpose in the real world. The next day, I gave them a starter that talked about Kenzie buying her favorite rapper\u2019s new CD and having to take into account the tax for each purchase. I set up the expression for them using the distributive property, and they were beyond excited to solve it. They stayed much more engaged for the rest of the class. The next day, I gave them another contextualized starter, this time involving Danni selling candy. I got Danni hooked completely for the first half of class, and even though he wasn\u2019t as productive in the second half, he wasn\u2019t disruptive like he had been the previous week.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to bringing in real-world contexts for my students, I also had them create and sign a class social contract: <\/p>\n

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Since the beginning of January, we spent the first part of class every Monday doing an activity I called “Team Love” : We each randomly chose a name out of a container, wrote a nice note or compliment to the person whose name we chose, exchanged notes, and then read the note we received out loud. My students eagerly asked me each Monday if we were going to do the activity, and I definitely think that it helped connect us as a classroom community.<\/p>\n