Emily Waddill Course 3 Blog 6

I want to start by saying that this school year has been a long one with many successes and failures along the way. I’ve learned so much from the short time that I’ve been working as a part of Spartanburg School District 6 and I’ve been presented with a lot of opportunities for growth that I’m very thankful for. Firstly, PBL was not something that I had ever heard of before this class and it is not something for the faint of heart to try implementing in the classroom. However, I can say that I’m prepared for what is to come and I’m looking forward to executing more PBL units in my classes over the following years. I can say that there were many things that just didn’t work and there were a lot of things that worked very well. So, throughout all of my experiences with PBL I have learned something new every time.

I’m really looking forward to setting up my classroom next year with more of a guided math framework. All year I know that this is how I eventually want my classroom to be run and I’ve been provided with many resources to help me out with planning. I had the opportunity to visit Chesnee Middle School and observe some guided math in action and Mrs. Woodson also gave me some resources to help. I think that PBL will fit in very well with this type of structure in my classroom. One of the teachers that I observed at Chesnee Middle School used the MATHS acronym for his guided math. This stands for making sense of the problem, application, technology, hands-on and small group and all of the students rotated through these stations. A PBL unit could be done at either the application station or the hands-on station and that is what I plan on doing. I want math to feel more relevant in student’s lives and giving them opportunities to see the applications will help with that. I know that realistically, guided math isn’t going to be done every day and it doesn’t have to be. So I still plan on doing introductions to new content through whole group lessons and then diving into the guided math rotations right after that. I can’t wait to get started next year with all of this in mind and I truly hope that next year will be my best year ever!