Alison’s 260 Weblog

I was able to teach my first everyday math lesson in the first grade classroom this week.  Lets just say it could have gone smoother.  The first problem that I saw within the lesson was that everyday math assigned 2 manipulative items into one lesson, pattern blocks and geoboards.  There was a frenzy when the pattern blocks were put out and not one student seemed to be listening in my mind.  When those were cleaned up, the geoboards were then distributed and it was the same situation.  They were not listening even though I felt as if I tried every technique possible to keep them with me and because they were not listening they were not able to complete the activity correctly.  The excitement with both items caused too much of a frenzy within the classroom which took away from the grasping of the overall concept.  If I were to teach this lesson for a second time I would not use both items even though everyday math told me too.  What is also hard is that everyday math doesn’t account time for spreading up lessons and expects you to follow each days lesson and move one.  So splitting them up would push of off schedule but I feel the students would have gotten more out of the lesson if that was done.