I am the first person to admit that I am not the best at math and in turn sometimes
struggle teaching math. I believe that my biggest weakness would be that I have
difficulty varying instruction for the students. I believe that one of my strengths is
grouping students based on their abilities and making real world connections. The
school district that I am in wants us to stick to the curriculum and I am having difficulty
differentiating the instruction due to not wanting to deviate from the curriculum goals.
One resource that I have researched that I feel will be very beneficial to improve my
instruction would be greatminds.org. This resource has videos of actual teachers
teaching the different strategies in several ways to differentiate instruction for students.
How might your weak areas affect student learning? What do you plan to do to
address these areas of weakness? How will growth improve your practice and
enhance student learning?
This weak area can affect student learning tremendously
because some students may not be able to grasp the concept the way the book is
instructing me to do so. I am going to address this by researching different ways to
teach the strategies and different manipulatives to use for first graders. This will ensure
that students have multiple ways to solve problems and give them the same instruction
in more than one way.
What specific resources are available to help you with your growth (i.e.,
professional organizations, online tools, etc.)?
I will utilize the website Great Minds to have visuals on how to teach the lessons
and I will use the Common Core Math Strategies book to help me with the eight
math practices for first grade.
