Story from the Practicum

It took me a while to post this to my blog. Nevertheless, here it goes.

The title of my story is "School Advisors"

I did not have a good story to tell about my practicum that included students and student-teachers interaction. Now, that might be good, if we look at it as "no news, good news." On the other hand, there were a few happenings that concerned my school advisors.

During my interview with my Faculty Advisor, Katharine Borgen, I was informed that my two school advisors were going to be Seema and Tanya. Then my FA asked me whether I taught Computer Science as well as math. I informed her that no. She then responded to me that she knew Seema and that in fact she knew that Seema was not teaching any other subject this year except CS. So most likely I would have to be assigned to another SA. When I got to the school, Seema asked another teacher, right then and there, if he wanted to have a student teacher. His name is Greg and he accepted. Tanya, he informed me, was on "mat leave," but was due to come back next week. So I worked for the first week with Greg by observing some of his classes and teaching a few. On the next week, I got to meet Tanya. She just came back from Mat leave and asked me if I was willing to teach a class for her. That was Tuesday, and on Wednesday I taught a class. It went relatively well. On that same day, the SAs and Student teachers met with the FA. Katharine told us that we needed to balance the classes so that none of us student teachers would get too many preps. So it ended up being that I would not work with Tanya nor Seema, but Esther, a teacher that I had only observed on a couple of classes, and Greg.

I think that my practicum is going to go well. I like both of my SA's and they seem to be very supportive. Greg gave me very specific feedback, which was something I was expecting from the practicum.

Two Column Approach to solve a problem

Hey guys, here is my solution to the "Black Friday" problem from the book "Thinking Mathematically"

Assessing the Book:

Applied Mathematics 12
SOURCE BOOK

The book is not very heavy, for a textbook. It is not very thick; it has only 420 pages. It would be easy for students to carry it from class to class because the size of the pages is even smaller than letter size.

This seems to be a very durable book because it has a hard cover and the pages are shiny. The binding is already giving up a little and I can imagine that the spine might split from the rest of the book in a few years, but overall this book is stern.

It doesn't smell much, which is good for a textbook. The pages are shiny and the colors used in the pictures are pleasing. The book has not been rebounded and it doesn't seem like anybody has altered it. It has not student-markings.

The book was published in 2002 in Toronto, Ontario by Pearson Education. I don't know any of the authors. They are mostly from Alberta and BC Universities.

This is the "source" book and it seems like it is supposed to be used along with another textbook, the "project" book because in the introduction it includes instructions on how to use both.

The table of contents tells you the name of the chapters and the lessons into which each chapter is divided, and the page where you can find them of course. It does not have a glossary, but instead it has a "Student Reference." It does have an Index and answer sheets. There are no supplementary problems. It has projects which could be used as enrichment material.

It has a good design with many colored illustrations of the concepts that the students must learn. It has many photos, diagrams, and illustrations. Yes it has all the IRP requirements. It has no logical sequence of chapters, but within each chapter there is a logical procedure.

The important concepts are not highlighted in the text part of the textbook. It has, though, boxes where they lay important explanations and/or definitions of concepts.