Field experience assignments:

Submitting Field Experience Assignments: Field experience assignments, unless otherwise noted, should be submitted to the appropriate dropbox

All field experience assignments must include what grade level class you are in! (I will not grade any assignments that don't include your name and the grade level of your field experience class.

1. Word problem interviews:

A. Interview plan assignment

Read the interview results from last year's preservice teachers at the grade level of the class you are in, and learn what you can from those interviews. Write a summary (at least 1/2 page) of what you learned about student knowledge at that grade level. In particular, look for information about what kinds of problems children at this grade level are likely to be able to do, and which problems children at this grade level are likely to have trouble with.

Notice that last year, while all interview questions were given in word problem format, that there was some inconsistency (even within interviews) in interview questions. While some interviews were focused mainly on childrens abilities to solve problems of different CGI types, other interviews also significantly changed the difficulty level of the numbers in the problems. This meant that in several interviews, the children were unable to solve the last, hardest problems, but because the problems were harder in two ways, the interviewer couldn't tell for sure if the children had trouble because the word problem type was more confusing or if the problem was the size of the numbers.

Plan an interview that you will conduct with the children in the class you are in for your field experience.

• Your interview should have several word problems that you will ask students to solve, and show you how they solved them.
• You should interview at least 3 children, and the interviews should be conducted one-on-one if at all possible.
• Your interview questions should be guided by the interviews you read about, and they should be aimed at finding out what children in your class can do. Usually this means you will want to ask questions that are near the level where you expect children to start having trouble (include a few easier questions to start with, and work up to more difficult questions). Pay attention to changing just one thing at a time (problem type or numbers) so you can tell what made a more difficult problem more difficult.
• The main focus for this interview should be understanding difficulties introduced by changing word problems to a more difficult word problem type, rather than identifying number fact fluency. The default for grades K and 1 interviews should be to provide counters (like the Unifix cubes in your kit) for children to use if they wish to. You should explain in your interview plan if you are planning to provide manipulatives, and why you made that choice.

B. Conduct the interview:

When I have OK-ed your plan, you should interview at least 3 children, ideally one-on-one.

Write a report on your interview, and post it to the discussion board. Your report should include the details of what questions were easiest and hardest for the children you interviewed, and what sorts of thinking strategies children shared with you for how they solved the problems. You should use pseudonyms for all of the children to preserve anonymity. Your report should be at least 500 words.  Don't forget to include the grade level of your class in your report too!

2. Observations: observe one or more math lesson(s). Write a report of your observations, including:

• How many different sections/activities were there in the math lesson. Describe what the teacher did and what the students did in each section.
• What were the math learning goals of the lesson?
• Identify a part of the lesson where the teacher was introducing a new idea or a new activity. How did s/he teach the new material? How did s/he give instructions and manage how materials were organized and passed out/collected.
• Identify a part of the lesson where the students were solving problems. How did the teacher monitor student understanding? (For example: walking around and observing, asking questions of children, or looking at student work).

3. Peer teaching: Choose a 10-15 minute section of a lesson to teach to our class at an upcoming Saturday meeting. This can be part of a lesson you observed or part of a lesson you plan to teach. Be prepared to discuss what the learning goals are, and how your lesson section addresses those learning goals. We should see at least 7 minutes of you actually presenting information or an activity to us as though we were students.

--Assignment 4 has been deleted for this semester--

4. Learn more about the students: By talking to your cooperating teacher and observing the children and the classroom, learn more about the teaching resources and the students. Write a context for learning essay that describes:

• The physical lay-out of the classroom
• The manipulatives and materials that are available for the teacher and students in the classroom
• The background and knowledge students have in math (what have they been learning so far? What things are they proficient at?)
• The goals for the students in math (what math topics are they going to be working on in the next several months? What big ideas are important for the children to master this year?)
• Special needs: are there students with special needs you should take into account when you are planning your lesson? What are those needs, and how can they be addressed?

5. Number talk: This should be conducted with a group (either a small group or the whole class). This mini-lesson should center around a computation strategy and include appropriate word and/or number problems. It should be conducted as a "Number Talk" or "Math Talk". You will need to submit a lesson plan to me and your cooperating teacher before teaching the lesson. Your lesson plan should include the questions you are planning to ask, and the computation strategy or strategies you would like to highlight as part of the number talk. Include sample language that you are planning to use when asking students about their computation strategies.

• Plan a math question you will ask (for children to figure out and share their strategies)
• Predict some strategies students might use to solve the problem
• Identify a strategy that you would like students to think about. Explain why you think that's appropriate using what you know about strategies students are using in class
• Plan a similar follow up math question you will ask children to solve.

More details are in the lesson plan and reflection template.

6. Plan and conduct a math read-aloud or math-nature activity that fits with a math topic the students in your class are working on. This should be taught to a group (either a small group (at least 5 students) or the whole class). This assignment has two options:

Math read aloud: if you choose to do a math read aloud, you will need to pick a book to read with the students that has some interesting math questions associated with it. They can be questions embedded within the book, or questions you can ask about the story. Lesson template for Math-literature option

• You will need to identify at least 3 math questions you are planning to ask while reading or after reading the story.
• For each of those math questions, you will need to identify the specific page in the book where you will stop at or return to when asking the question. You will need to include information about the text or picture on the page that you will be asking the question about.
• For each of those math questions, you will need to describe what sorts of answers you think you are likely to get from children when they are trying to answer the question.
• You will need to identify what math is involved in the questions you will be asking, and you will need to explain how that fits into the math topic the children are currently studying.

Math-Nature activity: if you choose to do a math-nature activity, you will need to pick a math topic that the students in your class are working on that you explore or work on outside and/or using natural artifacts. Lesson template for math-nature option.

• Students must be doing a grade-appropriate task that uses math.
• Nature artifacts can be used as manipulatives or can be used as context or data for the math problem.
• The activity should help students make connections between math and nature
• Ideally, the activity should help students see math as a tool for understanding the world around them.

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Related homework assignments

A. Common core readings and lesson analysis: read about the common core standards at the appropriate grade level, and analyze

B. Analyze parts of a unit: Take a unit and summarize each lesson. Write about the key ideas follow through several lessons and how?