Extra Blog: September

After searching for research on how to teach math in the first few research checks, I noticed something that came up a lot. Teaching math to Special Ed students seemed to be a difficult situation for most teachers. After seeing this pop up time after time, I decided to look into it and ask my mentor if she had any Special Ed students who she taught and how they reacted to the math curriculum. My mentor, Laura Murillo, said that she did work with a few Special Ed students who were placed into her class. She then referred me to one of her colleagues, Mike Lawrence. Mike Lawrence is a Special Ed Teacher at Rivera Middle School, who works with Special Ed students after they have been through my mentor's class. Mr. Lawrence average work day consists mainly of going over topics with Special Ed students after they have been through the actual class. Mr. Lawrence believes that teachers do a pretty good job at teaching the actual subject during instructional period, and thinks that having a person go over the material with the Special Ed student proves to be very beneficial. The main problem that Mr. Lawrence experiences when dealing with Special Ed students is their ability to focus and pay attention to a particular problem. Although this is a huge set back, most Special Ed students under his supervision seem to excel in their math courses and other courses they are taking. I think knowing about the students prior conditions should be an important aspect to consider when I am answering my essential question and I find that Mr. Lawrence might be incredibly useful to answer this. I will probably use Mr. Lawrence as an interviewee in our next interviews because of his abundant knowledge of teaching and helping students.

Blog 6: Second Interview Preparation

1. Who is your mentor and where do they work?
My mentor is Laura Murillo. She is a middle school math teacher and Rivera Middle School in Pico Rivera.

2. What 5 questions will you ask them about their background?
- What made you strive to become a math teacher?
- What college did you attend, and is it the one you wanted to attend?
- Did you always want to be a math teacher, and why?
- How do you feel about teaching middle school students?
- What aspect of being a math teacher do you most enjoy?

Blog 5 : Mentorship and Research Reflection

1. Describe your experience in how you found your mentorship. If you haven't found one yet, describe your experience so farina the search for a mentor.

Originally I had planned on my senior project being about teaching physics, however, I realized there are very few physicist around my area, and since it was the summer, none of the physics teachers were working. Eventually I realized it would be impossible for me to find someone with the little amount of time I had left. So I decided to look to other teaching positions in hope that it would prepare me a little for the teaching aspect of my original topic. I talked to a couple of teachers at the high schools in my area, but again they were one summer vacation, and wouldn't be able to actually help me into school started for me too. Finally, I turned my mother who is math teacher, and her district had started a week before we did, so I decided that she would be a good mentor. Since then, I helped her create lesson plans and clean up her class before school actually began.

2. What has been the most important article you have read so far and why?

I would say the most important article I have read is "Grade 8" by the Common Core State Standards Initiative because it helped me understand what is being taught to the students. Although I wanted to focus mostly on the teaching aspect of my senior project, it is imperative that I understand what is being taught so that I could understand why it is being taught a certain way.

Extra Blog: August

My senior project is teaching Middle School Math and although I haven't been able to go to the actual class and spend one-on-one time teaching students, I was still able to help my mentor out. I helped my mentor set up an activity where the student in the class created a human graph. By this I mean that students represented numbers and as a group they had to go out and graph the given function. The students would first line up on the x-axis with he number given to them, then they would plug their number into the function and move up and down the y-axis. The end result is that the students would actively experience xy-coordinate system to review its elements and be informally introduced to a linear function.

Blog 4: Interview Preparation

1. I plan to interview my mentor, Laura Murillo, because she has extensive knowledge of hot to teach 7th and 8th grade algebra since she has been doing that for 10 years.

2. 5 questions I want to ask:
2.1 What is the best way to teach 7th and 8th grade math?
2.2 How do the new Common Core Standards affect your teaching methods?
2.3 What kinds of problems arise from teaching teenage students?
2.4 Which topics are the most difficult for students to understand?
2.5 How do you handle students who do not understand difficult topics?
2.6 What is the best way to organize a class so that the students get the most out of it?

Blog 3: Topic Choice and Working EQ

1. Topic: 

Teaching 7th and 8th grade math.

2. Working EQ:

What is the best way to introduce new math topics to 7th and 8th grade students?

3. WB

The WB is posted on the right side of the blog under links.

Blog 2: Summer Mentorship

Literal: 

1. Link to mentorship hours.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1E4IpBrBIdnRIGBsKEjXse-Y7BdvLsgA-WbFYxJy3370/edit#gid=0

2. Contact name and number.

I volunteered at Rivera Middle School in Pico Rivera.

Mentor: Laura Murillo

Number: (626) 975-1796

3. Questions.

What exactly is going to change with the switch to common core?

How will you be affected by the new teaching methods?

Will the students be able to adapt to the new methods?

Will the classes become more or less difficult because of the switch?

Interpretive: 

4. What is the most important thing you gained from this experience?

The most important thing I learned from this experience is that teachers still rely on teamwork to put things together. For example, there are about 2 or 3 math teachers for each grade level, and the all work together to figure out the most affective way to teach their math using common core. As I helped in setting up the basic lesson plans, it was apparent that the teachers worked a lot swifter with each other to achieve the goal. This was obvious a very important thing for me because although we practice this at iPoly, it was sort of weird to see it in an actual work environment. However, this showed me that it is a very important concept. 

Applied

5. My senior project is going to be about teaching math through common core. After going to these two days of I realized that it would be nice to understand the new common core system that everyone will be using.