Phase 1
Findings:
In the last section it was noted that student progress was not linear. In the graph above I added trend lines to go with each student's progress, but as you can see the trend lines are hard to match with the actual student progress. This further demonstrates that student learning throughout this phase was not linear. Rather it was a whole process of successes and not so great demonstrations of knowledge. The only student who did not dip in their production of Spanish was Student D, because she was absent and therefore was not a part of individual conferences. Every other student experienced some improvement and then some difficulty. As much as I was hoping that there would only exist continual improvement during this phase, my main focus was that every single student experienced improvement on some level.
I noticed that students tended to speak more when they have struggled and persevered to find the answer. When the math was "easy," students gave much shorter explanations such as, "I counted" or "I already knew that 4+3=7." If they had gone through a whole process in their head then they were much more able to explain that process and put what they did into words, much of the time utilizing the Spanish that they could. It is not that the students who already knew how to do the math, and quickly, couldn't explain what they had done, rather they thought that the process should be obvious. I even had a student respond to my question (of course asked in Spanish) of "How did you know that?" with "My brain is just really good at math, maestra!" in a somewhat exasperated tone. To him the process was easy and my asking about it seemed unnecessary to him. This leads me to believe that providing students with a level of rigor is not only important for their learning math, but also for their development of processing information.
I asked students to explain their thought process in front of the class with the idea of getting students used to articulating their thinking. I wanted students to understand that learning is a process that at times has different answers. By adding the element of Spanish to the process I my goal was for students to become comfortable putting their language to use mistakes in all, as mistakes are an integral part of the learning process. However, upon reflection I feel that asking students to articulate their thinking in a new language in front of the entire class may have been too much to ask of them. The students did phenomenal work during this phase, but perhaps I should have started them in small groups to build confidence. I have explained that all students found some kind of success throughout this phase. However, I as a teacher know that student collaboration works very well when students are in small groups. Perhaps students would have found more success practicing their discussions in small comfortable settings, instead of articulating themselves in front of the entire class.
I noticed that students tended to speak more when they have struggled and persevered to find the answer. When the math was "easy," students gave much shorter explanations such as, "I counted" or "I already knew that 4+3=7." If they had gone through a whole process in their head then they were much more able to explain that process and put what they did into words, much of the time utilizing the Spanish that they could. It is not that the students who already knew how to do the math, and quickly, couldn't explain what they had done, rather they thought that the process should be obvious. I even had a student respond to my question (of course asked in Spanish) of "How did you know that?" with "My brain is just really good at math, maestra!" in a somewhat exasperated tone. To him the process was easy and my asking about it seemed unnecessary to him. This leads me to believe that providing students with a level of rigor is not only important for their learning math, but also for their development of processing information.
I asked students to explain their thought process in front of the class with the idea of getting students used to articulating their thinking. I wanted students to understand that learning is a process that at times has different answers. By adding the element of Spanish to the process I my goal was for students to become comfortable putting their language to use mistakes in all, as mistakes are an integral part of the learning process. However, upon reflection I feel that asking students to articulate their thinking in a new language in front of the entire class may have been too much to ask of them. The students did phenomenal work during this phase, but perhaps I should have started them in small groups to build confidence. I have explained that all students found some kind of success throughout this phase. However, I as a teacher know that student collaboration works very well when students are in small groups. Perhaps students would have found more success practicing their discussions in small comfortable settings, instead of articulating themselves in front of the entire class.