My Personal Learning Path

 Susie Smith

My journey:

I am currently a teacher’s aide in my local district.  I am in a fifth grade classroom.  In week 2 for me which was right after the Christmas break, my teacher was out with Covid.  They asked me if I would be ok being the substitute teacher and I said yes.  I taught math lessons for 8 days.  During the special at the first period of the day I would go over the lesson.   I also took the Math teacher’s guide home some nights to review the lesson for the next day.  The students are learning multiplication and division of fractions.  I started each lesson with a visual - either drawing in their math notebooks or using index cards to visualize.  The book used for the lesson gave great ideas on what to do.   

For example:

1. I gave out index cards and had them figure out ½ x 3 using the index cards.  

2. I then picked on one pair to tell me and show the answer.  

3. I asked if anyone had another way they did it and to show the class what they did

4. I then would go over the method(s) from the teacher’s guide on the board.

5. If there was more than one method given in the book, the easiest one would be last.  

6. We would then do a few practice examples together and then I would have the students do practice work on their own.  

7. As the students do the practice work I would go around the room and see if anyone was struggling.

8. We would review approx. 3 problems and then they would do more practice for homework.  

Some things that I am thinking about are:  

1. How to make sure I am teaching for each child to learn to their full potential.

2. I have one student with ADHD that some days does not want to do math at all.  I am concerned about him falling behind.  He also does not know his times tables and the work with fractions we are doing would be so much easier for him if he knew his times tables by heart.