Weekly Report & Reflection Week #6!

Reflection 6- 

Witch's Recipe for Proportions

I can definitely say I enjoyed this week's class a lot as I learned a lot and got to do few challenging activities. I want my students to feel the same way when they are in my classroom. Each student in my classroom needs to feel that yes I am being challenged, but that challenge is at my level only. 

That takes us to differentiating instruction, which means to engage students in instruction and learning in the classroom. All students need sufficient time and a variety of problem-solving contexts to use concepts, procedures and strategies and to develop and consolidate their understanding. When I as a teacher would be aware of my students’ prior knowledge and experiences, I can consider the different ways that students learn without pre-defining their capacity for learning. So it comes all back to me as a teacher, I want to be the best math teacher out there. 

So, this week's class we learned mostly about proportions, what better way to learn about proportions than to engage students' in a witch's recipe? Yes, one of our activities was to mix a brew for the witches. I think that is a perfect way to engage students. They can have fun and be interested with the problem but also learn the core concepts. Concepts in the problems included multiplication, division, estimation, calculation, and proportions. 

Proportional thinking can be hard. It is not an easy concept for students to grasp. However, the different activities that we were shown in class by classmates was amazing and can be used for my practicum block that is coming up soon. That takes me to lesson planning. Today finally I had a practical experience with lesson planning. I had fun lesson planning and I think I was on track with it. I wasn't too sure about my lesson planning until the instructor showed us a video and explained step by step how one lesson plans. I have to thank that instructor for making it easier for us. 

After the video, I reviewed my lesson plan and thought I only need minor changes rather than major. That tells me that I am somewhat ready to lesson plan. Our instructor had divided our class into two and asked us to lesson plan in a large group. I got the witch's brew recipe problem and I got the perfect idea of how I would start my lesson if I were to teach that to my students. I would bring a large test tube with me and show them if I have 20 mL of water and I want to multiply it by number how would the amount of water change. 

That takes us back to the witch's problem because in that problem the recipe serves 3 people but we want it to serve 9, so we will have to multiply 3 by 3 to get nine. Hence, if water is an ingredient and we need to 20 mL for 3 servings, we can multiply 20 mL by 3 to get total of 9 servings. Therefore, this procedure applies to all the other ingredients on the list of a recipe. 

I think that assumptions and precisions matter when studying proportions!