Using Research to analyze, inform and assess changes in instruction
by Heather Robinson
I am sure that it is important to keep track of your own performance to see where improvements could be made to lesson plans, and to see how students learned, and if you could do something to make the lessons more engaging for students. Providing a variety of strategies for learning, and measuring student response will ultimately benefit both the student and the teacher. There is nothing more rewarding than to have your students succeed and therefore you as a teacher succeed. Knowing that you have helped a young person become a responsible adult capable of learning on their own is a most rewarding feeling.
Never underestimate your students provided you engage them in communicating their ideas of math and how they would solve problems. Students can come up with very clever solutions and in the process learn how to think critically.
Robinson has come up with a class management and instruction plan that limits pure lecture to 60 minutes per week. As a new teacher this time may need to be slightly longer as one gains experience and sees how students react to possible new methods.
It is important that the discussions be kept on track by asking questions. It is important for students to visualize math and feel how it works with interactive manipulatives.