Notes about discussing the CGI Interview with your cooperating teacher. (Teaching reflection: if I were teaching this again, I would do this earlier in the process next time)

• Discuss this (and everything you do in your field experience) with your cooperating teacher.
• Share the interview questions you are planning to ask.  Share that the goal is to have some problems that will be easy for all students, and some that will be difficult or at least problematic for some students.
• Respect your cooperating teachers wishes about when, where and with whom you will conduct the interviews.
• Let me know about changes you made to your interview plan (it's OK to do this after the fact)
• Don't expect your cooperating teacher to know all of the CGI names for problem types.  Unless your teacher has encountered this specific way of organizing word problems they probably are not used the terms we are using .  Your cooperating teacher will know things like:
  • There are different kinds of addition and subtraction word problems.
  • Some of them are basically missing number problems (JCU, for instance, can be thought of as a missing number addition problem).
  • They will recognize that Separate (take away) problems are different from Compare problems
  • They will recognize that there are some preferred situations that children associate with addition and subtraction, and they may recognize that if you go outside those preferred situations, children may find the problem more difficult (compare is more difficult than take-away)
• Probably your cooperating teacher will be interested in the results of your interview--share what you learned.  The teacher will probably have some insights into those students that will correllate with what you learned from the interview.