Weekly Blog Post - Week 5

Hey everyone, welcome back to the blog! A few days ago, we had our fifth class for EDBE 8F83. In this post, I will reflect upon this lesson by using different prompts and supplementing them with images and resources. 

What struck you during the session?

Something that struck me during the session was our discussion on the transition from grade 9 to grade 10 and how the jump could be larger for the higher achieving students now as these students are going from destreamed to academic. When I was in high school, I found my worst transition to be the jump from grade 9 to 10 and that was coming from taking academic prior. I think it is important to be aware of this as a future educator as my knowledge in grade 9 will most likely not be what they had. In the future, I will make an effort to make this transition as seamless as possible. 

What were the dominant emotions evoked (affect)?

One dominant emotion I felt was confusion, which then led to a new understanding. Similar to last week, my group and I struggled with the problem we were given to complete (I have attached a photo of the problem below!). We were able to find the areas of the two squares quickly but struggled to find the area of the circle. I was shocked to find out that you used skills in grade 9 to solve this problem. I think this has made me aware that in the next two years of my teacher education, I have to fully understand the curriculum and the key expectations for each grade and subject. I think it is unrealistic to know it back to front at the end of my two years, but I hope I have a good understanding of what is expected of all grades. 

What for you were the main points (cognition)?

The following three points summarize what was discussed in our lesson:

1. Trigonometry is an area of mathematics that is present in grades 7-12 and progresses as a student matures. 

2. Grade 10 courses are structured differently than grade 9 as they have academic and applied courses.Each grade 9 student must have a full understanding of the main concepts taught in the course for optimal success in grade 10. 

3. Many aspects need to be considered when lesson planning. It is important to consider what kind of assessment will be occurring in the lesson (for, as or of), what tools they may need and why you as the educator are conducting the lesson. 

What actions might you want to pursue further (awareness)?

Something I would like to pursue further is investigating Assessment For, Assessment As and Assessment Of Learning. By viewing the charts from the Growing Success document (link to the document and charts are provided below), it is quite clear how they are defined and how they look in a classroom. However, there are no subject-specific resources in this document. I would like to see if I can find some specific examples of these being utilized in a math classroom or potentially create my own. 

https://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/policyfunding/growsuccess.pdf

That's all from me today! I hope you enjoyed reading my post and I hope you will be here for the next one!