Rarely ever does it occur, but when the students filter into the classroom after taking their chairs down and setting their folders and assignment notebooks on their desk, they begin to write down their assignments. On these rare occasions, I don’t even need to listen closely as the exclamations begin, “No math homework? YESSSSS!!!!!” or “we don’t have math homework today! Best day ever”

Needless to say, math has been a subject of frustration. The kids seem constantly distracted or bored during lessons and then have trouble with the material. No wonder! On Friday, I tried having all of them come closer to the SMARTboard, having my distractible students sit at the table, with the goal of them being able to be more hands on with one another in solving the problems and more alert in completing the problem set. It was not as successful as I would have liked it to be, but nonetheless it was another example of being receptive to the needs of the students.  A step back and ensuring understanding of the material is necessary is essential and this lesson did open my eyes to the fact that some of the students still did not have understanding of previous material that was necessary to understand the material I was trying to teach. After all, sometimes it is a game of trial and error, but there is always a lesson to learn which enables me to better help my students.