During EDUC 330 we were asked to do two article reviews on issues we have seen throughout our field block experience. We were asked to research and find articles that related to these issues and reflect on the articles. My first article review was on the idea of student autonomy and how to help students overcome their fear in a math classroom. This article suggested that one way we can help student autonomy is by making sure students feel like they have a say in their own education can be very beneficial and even motivating for students. This article gave me a change in perspective and during my student teaching I tried to give students as many options in their learning as I possibly could. My second article was related to test anxiety and how to help students who suffer from test anxiety. This article goes through potential methods of anxiety relief that we can teach students to help them lower this anxiety. I think test anxiety is a big issue in today's students and this gave me some methods that will help my future students cope with the test anxiety. Both of these articles gave me the opportunity to see how these issues in education could be solved and how I should be relating these methods to my future classroom. This demonstrates my curiosity in issues within the educational world and how I can change my perspectives in hopes to engage my future students. 

Artifact 2 - Unit Plan

For my first placement of Student Teaching in Bradford, PA my teacher asked me to plan out an entire unit that I would be teaching throughout my placement. The Unit that I planned was Chapter 5,  Polynomials for the Algebra 2 classroom. For this I had to read the textbook that is used at Bradford and look at all of the key topics of polynomials to then break the chapter into lessons and plan how long each learning segment would take to complete in the classroom. This demonstrates my connection of concepts because I was required to plan the whole chapter and what order the lessons should go in to connect with each other and make the most sense for the students. Also throughout my unit I used different perspectives and different interactive lessons to engage students and help them not only understand the math but to challenge them in critical thinking and problem solving. 

Artifact 3 - Lab Lessons

During my second student teaching placement in Springville Middle School I was challenged to show material in a new light through my Math Labs. In Springville students have a regular math class where they are taught the material and also have a math lab where teachers go over various topics and help students to practice their mathematical skills. My teacher had 3 Math Labs built into her schedule per day and it was my responsibility to plan them. This meant that I had to see what topics the students were learning about that week and connect those concepts to an activity that would allow students to practice these skills they have learned. These Math Labs gave me many opportunities to connect concepts and try out new and varying perspectives that the students would not have seen in a regular math classroom. I shared one example of a lesson I taught in lab having to do with graphing a line given a table of values. In this lesson I had the students practice this topic using real world application through vacation planning because it was around spring break. Throughout my placement I was able to relate the math they were learning into more real life scenarios so they could see how math is used to solve real world problems.