Personal Learning Path - Keith (Fall 2023 Fordham University - CTGE-5227)

 Although I want my end of semester project to focus on area and perimeter, I would like to shift my focus of my personal learning path from area and perimeter to place value. I would like to change to place value because students in 4th grade are learning about place value. Furthermore, I would like to change my direction to place value because I have been supporting with a 4th grade math class while substitute teaching for the fall 2023 semester. Upon subbing one day this week,  I was supporting the class with their homeroom teacher on place value and I decided to help the teacher when asking students some questions. However, the teacher that I was supporting told me that when I was trying to support her teaching, I was teaching the work wrong.  Although it made me feel a bit stunted in my work, I took it as a learning opportunity. The experience opened doors for me to unlearn or to expand my teaching skills. I want to practice my instructional skills with place value i...

 This week, I visited a 5th grade class. They were doing a math refresher; it was a two pager about the math that they learned from last year. As I was watching them do the work, I noticed some students struggling. It was interesting but when I was talking to the teacher about the worksheet, it was in fact 3rd grade math work.  It made me reflect on summer learning loss and how students lose a portion of what they learned last year through the 2 months that they are off of school. I think as a teacher, including summer work and packets at the end of the school year will be helpful for families and my past students. I might even be able to incentivize the work but telling them that they will receive a gift or a prize if they bring it back for the nest school year. 

Hey Everyone, w elcome to my first posting. Hopefully I'm doing this right! To start off my personal learning path, I want you all to know what I will focus on this semester.  This semester, I would like to explore 4th or 5th grade math and my first focus will be measurements and data, such as area, perimeter, and volume. My secondary choice will be on numbers and operations in base ten. I enjoyed this area as a child, so I am interested in seeing how it being taught currently, and how it can be relatable in other math topics. My goal for the end of this semester will be to make math safe, fun and relatable to the population that I serve using real-world connections. The three cards problem that I had to do on blackboard helped remind me of my how I used to practice math as a kid. This was the diagram that I used to help me solve the problem:      At first, this problem doesn't really seem to relate to measurements of data with area and perimeter and such. However, w...