Marquetta Strait April 10, 2013 CU Life Reflection: 8 While in Claflin Universitys Learning Improvement for Future Excellence

(CU Life), I have truly enjoyed my experience at Mitchell Math and Science Elementary School. This experience has been rewarding because I have been strengthening my instructional strategies in math and science. This experience has increased my desire to make a positive difference in our youth. During activity time, Ms. Black split her class into two groups by gender. As I worked with the girls, she worked with the boys on the same assignment. Both groups were working on reading charts that has keys, such as one rose represents two mothers. While working with the girls, I had them to work together and complete their worksheet. I first had the students read the title and then look at the key. I explained that the key on charts are essential because it allows the people to easily count the items on the chart. For instance, if someone wanted to show 15 bags of candy, they would not draw out all 15 bags. Preferably, they would give their chart a key that would represent each bag to be counted as three bags of candy. In return, the person would only have to draw five bags of candy, opposed to draw fifteen bags, The girls did well on reading the chart and identifying which category had the most items. I found that the students had the most difficulty in finding the range of line plots. On the worksheets line plots, there were numbers that had x marks and there were some that did not. At first, the students would immediately look at the largest number and smallest numbers on the

M. Strait| 2

line plot and try to find the range. I had to continuously explain to them that they were to look for the highest and smallest number on the number with at least one x. After finding those two numbers, they then needed to subtract. Another posed problem was that some of the students were adding instead of subtracting and trying to do mental math that would result in an incorrect answer due to them not grasping the concept. After several tries, the students having the difficulty eventually grasped the concept. In Mr. Wingards fourth grade class, the students were reflecting on their experience, during the fall semester, taking the M.A.P.S. test. He explained to his students that the M.A.P.S. test increasingly becomes more challenging as the students take the test, opposed to the PASS test. The students each had a goal worksheet, which allowed the students to look at their fall M.A.P.S. tests score and their desired score for the spring M.A.P.S. test. I believe this was a great opportunity for the students to reflect and improve their test taking strategies for a more successful outcome. As a class, the students discussed some important strategies that would be beneficial to them while taking their M.A.P.S. test. The students decided that it was good to have a good attitude while taking the test. They should not become discouraged while taking the test. Being that this test becomes more challenging, depending on your previous questions response, the students decided that they would box the test. In other words, the students will not give up, but rather, they will give their all and do their best on their test. Second, they decided that it was important to eliminate obvious incorrect choices. Lastly, they decided to use context clues or prefixes and suffixes to determine the definitions of unknown vocabulary.

M. Strait| 3

As this wonderful opportunity of being in CU LIFE is coming to an end, I am really absorbing as much information as I can to make me a more effective educator. I enjoy that my mentor

teachers have created an atmosphere of learning in the classroom. The students are willing to learn and respect their teachers as leaders that are trying to help them succeed. The experience that I am receiving in this program is very valuable and shows that I will be able to reach and teach every student within my classroom.