I taught the first section of 8^th grade math at Falls City Elementary. The Oregon Focus curriculum breaks the 8^th grade math in to 3 parts: Linear Equations, Data Analysis, and Lines and Angles. Each of these is a separate book. I taught in the first trimester, so the 8^th graders were still doing linear equations, but they were near the end of the book, so they will soon be moving on to data analysis. Linear equations are first introduced in the 7^th grade, but are used all throughout the math classes that are offered after this point. After completing the 8^th grade math curriculum, my students will move up to high school level math either Algebra 1 or Geometry. The skills they learned in my unit not only built on previous information, but also will be built upon more in the future. Math seems to be taught in a linear fashion, so the skills they have been learning will be used more as they progress.

            The two types of assessments that I gave were summative and formative. My pre-test could technically be considered a summative assessment and I gave that the first day I began teaching. The other summative assessment that I gave was my post assessment and I gave that 3 weeks later when I finished my teaching. I gave formative assessments every day, either in the form of exit cards or warm-up problems, or both. The formative assessments were never scored, but were used as information to help me shape my lesson plans.

        One other thing I would like to note about my practicum experience, is that Falls City Elementary has a shortened school week. Instead of attending school for 5 days a week, my students only attended 4 days a week. Because of the 3 day weekends every week, they would often come to school on Monday and claim that they could not remember what they had learned the week before. Because of this I spent extra time covering some topics and had them identify their own learning in exit cards every day.