Taking Time to Reflect and a FREEBIE

As teachers, we constantly evaluate ourselves and reflect on our practices.  That's how we grow and improve.  Well, this year my state is implementing Common Core Standards and boy am I reflecting like crazy on what I'm doing and how I need to change!

One thing I really struggle with is being more of a facilitator in math and allowing my students to discover how to solve problems.  I love being the star of the show (no surprise as our class is called the Celebrities, lol) and having my traditional teacher input time where I teach my kiddos what I know.  I many times revert to teaching algorithms or little tips and tricks to help students solve problems.  Common Core really wants students to focus on the why and being able to explain what they are doing.  In our professional development at school this week, we talked all about how students need to really truly understand the concepts and not just procedures.  With all that being said, I'm trying to improve how I teach math and am really trying to move to a model that my county suggests where students start the math lesson by grappling with a math problem first, then complete a math talk, and later in the lesson, I provide clarification or hit on important teaching points.  So as I was planning tonight, I created a few problems working with arrays (3.OA.1) and wanted to share them in case anyone else could benefit from them.  Just click on the pic to go to them:

 

I also wanted to mention that I've loaded a new Questioning Resource Pack to TPT that focuses on using Question Answer Relationships (QAR), the strategy monitor/clarify, and Bloom's Taxonomy question stems.  Please check it out if you're interested:



Oh, and leave a comment below (with your email) telling me a teaching practice that you've been reflecting upon lately.  I'll use a random number generator in a few days to pick two people to give my Questioning Resource Pack!!!