So it has been a little over a month of student teaching and  I think I’ve gotten just about one week’s worth of sleep.  Still, I’m functioning.

This past Tuesday, February 26, I had my first observation.  I can’t say that I did exceptionally well, but it definitely wasn’t horrible.  Actually, throughout these past few weeks I’ve really seen how I have some many areas to grow – not only in teaching but in my own personality and character development.

I’m an anxious person – someone who gets anxious if I can’t get enough sleep, if I think someone doesn’t like me, if I’m not exceeding expectations, etc. Student teaching involves ALL of that.  Yes, so my first week wasn’t exactly easy, but I’ve learned.  And I’m learning still – learning through discovery.  Maybe by next week I will be able to say that students aren’t just calling out answers, but we’ll see.

Anyway, I wanted to share about the motivation for my lesson that I was observed on.  I was starting a unit on Systems of Equations and I wanted to have a good motivation.  While the motivation maybe didn’t fit exactly into the lesson I taught that day, I still like it so I would like to share it.

 

So basically I told the following story to my students, and they needed to come up with a question that needed to be answered:

“Every Sunday I like to go to Dunkin Donuts and buy 4 donuts and 2 coffee’s for $8, all to share with my family.  But this Sunday my mom was having some friends over so I had to buy 8 donuts and 3 coffees for $12! Today I want to go back and buy 1 donut and 1 small coffee for myself.”

What question comes to mind when you read that?

 

This style evokes students to come up with their own question, and then use the facts from the story to answer it – it is a “learning through discovery” technique.  It is interesting to reflect on the fact that students learn well when they discover, and we too learn form discovery in our daily lives. More on my learning in teaching to come.