Girls play with their hair and boys crawl in and out of their shirts

I was sick the day I was to be video taped by Teena.  So today I got out my IPhone and taped a calendar discussion.  I actually was filmed by one of the students half way through it.

BUT first, math aside, I noticed all the girls playing with their hair and boys crawling inside and out of their shirts.  I noticed the flab hanging down on my arms(EW) and the dimples in my knees(double ew).  I also must have started every other sentence with "so".

I had to do a lot of pressing because of misunderstandings arising about shapes, two dimensional and three.  As I got more into the discussion I realized I had some reteaching to do and some clarifying.

I could not get clear attributes from the students on shapes.  It is difficult to have discourse when the students can't describe a shape and get confused over two and three dimensional figures.

I spent most of the discourse trying to get them to converse about Nick's statement,

" A rectangle is made up of 2 cubes".

It then morphed into a rectangular prism , and we had to spend some time on the difference between two dimensional and three dimensional.

I finally got them to the point where it was decided it was a square he meant and not a cube.  We played around with a piece of construction paper to see if it was really made up of two squares.  It became obvious they needed to go over what makes up a square.  I finally got the statement a square had equal sides and a rectangle did not.

By that time I knew we needed to move on .  The phrase "beating a dead horse "was reverberating through my brain.  (Hey Ashley could I iterate that for you again?)

What did I learn from watching myself besides the disgust of how I perceive myself on film and the total squirminess  of 1st graders on the floor??

It was humbling.  I was so sure they had a stronger sense of shapes.  I did quite a bit of pressing, and I think the questions were good.  I also think I stopped it in a good place because it was obvious to me I had some reteaching to do.  I see improvements I need to make both in management and in teaching.

I think I could probably have a class recorder to tape me and it would be fine with them.  An Iphone can be a handy thing.  

Hummm I wonder how they would react to seeing themselves in this video?  I think that could be a valuable discussion.


"Do you see any mathematicians sitting on the floor?"