Yes I Am Actually Teaching While I'm Here!

So I know all I’ve really been posting about while I’m down here has been the fun trips we’ve been taking, but I have actually been teaching! As I said in my last blog, I have been teaching a Year 9, a Year 11, and a Year 12 class. These are all with different teachers in different classrooms, so it has been a really exciting way to learn new teaching strategies and skills. Plus, I have the advantage of getting feedback from multiple teachers on how I’m doing rather than just one.

I've already shown a picture of this, but here is the math department's office. It's very convenient!

My Year 9 class is basically the equivalent to an 8^th grade Algebra 1 course for the part I have been teaching. They don’t have standardized tests here like we do back home, so they pretty much teach at the pace they want. They still have standards to meet to prepare them for the future, but it’s not as focused on tests as it is in MN. Also, they don’t just teach Algebra for the whole year, but instead they mix it up. When I started in Petro’s class just observing, they were learning about number operations (adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing) with negative numbers. Then I started teaching right after that on rounding and percentages. The first lesson I taught them was on rounding and significant figures. I found a little rhyme I liked that goes “4 or below, let it go. 5 and above, give it a shove”. Now for those of you who understand math, you should understand the rhyme, and for those of you who don’t, then don’t worry about it. I think they liked it and I quizzed my students on it a couple weeks later and they still remembered it, so that was good! Then I spent a couple days on scientific numbers which are used with really really big numbers or really really small numbers. I looked online and found many distances such as here to the sun, the closest star, from NZ to MN, etc. and then measurements such as the height of a US dollar bill (which I showed them) in kilometers so that the numbers were large and small. They thought that was pretty cool. After these concepts we moved on to percentages. This included just some background information on percentages, percentage increase and decrease, percentage change, percentage of a number, and GST (which is their tax that they put on basically everything here. It’s 15% and is already included, so the price doesn’t jump up when you go to check out). For the most part, my notes consisted of some lecture and then a lot of practice. I like to let my students have the opportunity to try out the concepts on their own after learning about them, so I gave them time to work on some homework and ask questions at the end. I did, however, find a fun song on percentage change that goes to the tune of “You Spin Me Right Round”, so feel free to check it out on YouTube. Once we were all done with notes, I came up with a percentage project for the students to complete in groups. Basically, the students had $1000 to spend, and they had a given list of items with certain conditions to apply (certain percent discounts, adding GST, shipping taxes, different BOGO deals), and then they had to create a poster showing all of their math that they completed. I had walked around Thames the week before to gather a bunch of ads from different shops, so the students found what they wanted in those ads and then cut them out. For the most part, I think the students really enjoyed getting to do something other than maths notes, and it was fun watching them go through the ads and talking about prices and discounts and whether or not they had enough money for everything they wanted. I had the students each choose one major category from the unit (the ideas mentioned above that go along with percentages and rounding) and then they went through their notes and picked out key information and examples to write down on a poster. I then had the students to present their posters to the class to help them review everything from the unit before they went on break. It seemed like this was one of the first presentations they gave, so I think it was good for some of the students to get out of their comfort zone and speak up in front of everyone. This is the class I have for Roopu, so I’m starting to really get to know them and they really do respect me as their teacher. This class is a lot of fun to work with, so I look forward to my last two weeks with them where I’ll be teaching ratios!

This is one of the classrooms I teach in. They basically all look the same.

In my Year 11 class which is basically a 10^th grade Algebra class (hard to tell if Algebra 1 or 2 because it depends on the material and skill level of what they’re learning), I haven’t done as much. The very first day, Richard had me present an example up on the board. At that point, the students had only been working on problems, so I had no idea what they knew, how Richard would normally present a problem to the class, or if I even did it right since it was on bearings and I’ve never learned about those before. Luckily I did okay, but there was also only half the class there since the others were on a trip. Then the next two days, the students were preparing for a test in their workbooks. They had two practice tests to be working on. I took half the students to another room where I oversaw their work and completed problems on the board with them while Richard got the other half of the class who were gone to catch up. It was basically like a little review session that I led, and it was a really nice way to start getting to know some of the students. They were reviewing trigonometry and right-triangles, so it was something I was really comfortable with being in charge of. Then the students began linear equations. In this class, it is really difficult for them to just sit and take notes for a long time, so Richard gives them a lot of work time to practice. A lot of what I have been doing in his class is noting how he teaches and then walking around and helping students during work time. I did come up with my own Gas Mileage problem which was a linear story problem in which they had to come up with an equation, graph it, and then find missing values with their equation. This kind of problem is one they could possible see on their external exams. I led the class in an activity in which they had to work on the problem on their own for 10 minutes, then they got to meet up with their groups to fill in any gaps and answer any questions, and then we went over it as a class. Other than this, it is a lot of work time in the class while Richard and I assist them which is good because they really need the practice of doing it on their own. They are starting something new after break, so Richard said he may have me teach some actual lessons before I leave. Honestly, I’ve been teaching the other two classes I have since like the second or third week, so it has been nice having a class where I’m not planning a lesson every single day. After one of my lesson where I went over some problem at the front of class and then walked around and helped students, Richard said that I was going into the right profession and that I was a natural. It felt really good to hear that!

Petro is great and packs our lunches (we're spoiled, we know) which usually consists of a deli sandwich and some fruit. Lunch is one of our favorite parts of the day! Besides teaching of course because we love that.

Finally, I’ve been teaching Zac’s Year 12 class which is like an 11^th grade Algebra 2 class. I started off working with about five students on excellence questions. These are the hardest kinds of questions students will see on their big external exams, so it is nice that they can practice them. Zac came up with the problems and I worked with the students towards methods of finding the correct solutions and ways to write really neat solutions with all the necessary information for scoring. At the time they were learning about quadratics and applications of quadratics, so during my second week, I taught a lesson on Area-Perimeter problems. I came up with a nice 5-step process in which these problems could be solved and it made it so that the solution would be nicely written in the end. After applications of quadratics were done, I began my unit on indices (or exponents) and logarithms. I taught six lessons on indices which consisted of the basic rules of indices, negative indices, fractional indices, and negative and fractional indices. For this class, I created a PowerPoint presentation for notes which helped guide what I was going to say and already have the examples on the board. I usually presented notes at the beginning of class, gave the class work time, and summed up what we learned at the end. What I’ve been doing with this class is having them guess the activities I’ve been doing by putting some sort of relevant math problem on the board that has an answer of some distance or height of something I had done. Then the students had to guess what I did. For example, one of the problems led to the answer 19.4, so I told them I walked 19.4 km and asked them where I went. Eventually they guessed Tongariro Crossing which was correct. I think it has been a nice opener for me to get to know the students and then they can learn about what I’m doing while here. After indices, I had about 5 lessons on logarithms. My first lesson I did some background information of logarithms which I think they liked because it was a break from doing work. We got to go back and look at how people calculated things way back when without calculators, and I think they actually begin appreciating how logs helped in the past and why they were created which was my point. I’ve taught them the basic definition of logs, the properties of logs, and how to solve index equations using logs. One activity that I thought was pretty neat was having them complete logarithm speed dating. Basically they were in two lines facing each other. They each had a logarithm to be solved in their hand. They would have to solve their partner’s problem quickly (I gave about 30 seconds) and then I would say next and the students would shift down one and go again. I thought it was a pretty fun activity, but it got kind of chaotic after a few switches. I’ve taught them for a few weeks now, and Zac said the students are really responding to me now as their teacher which is great. I’m having a lot of fun with this class. I feel like I’ve been able to try so many things with them which is nice. Zac has some really helpful feedback as well, so it’s been nice working with him.

Here's a cool mural that's in our building on the way up to class.

One thing I thought was pretty cool was that Shaina and I set up Pi Month (March of 2014, 3/14) at the school. We assigned all the Juniors a digit of the number pi (we had to look them up of course) and then gave designated lists to the roopu teachers. All the students were supposed to decorate their assigned number, and then Shaina and I went into school early one day to hang them all up in order. Unfortunately some of the teachers didn’t actually have their class complete the numbers, so we had to make some filler numbers so that the kids who did make a number still got to see theirs on the wall. We hung them all down the maths hallway. It ended up looking pretty neat and it added some color! It was really neat because the students were excited to see their numbers posted. Since Thames had never heard of pi day (just March 14^th) before, Shaina and I decided that’s how we’d leave our legacy at the school! They already told us they’ll be celebrating pi day next year, too!

Here are all of our numbers! We ended up with about 150 digits total!

See, there is no way I could be making all that up. So although it may seem like all I’m doing is going on adventures and having fun, I am teaching as well (which is also a lot of fun). It’s been a great experience so far teaching at this school. The students are great, the other teachers are great, the weather is great, and everything has been going really smoothly. I look forward to my last two weeks after this break before going home!