Lesson Plan for Activity 1

Lesson Plan Handouts 

Summary of Activity 1: “Getting to Know You” Interview

In this activity, prospective teachers conduct a single interview with one student in their practicum classroom in an effort to become more familiar with the student’s activities and interests, the student’s home and community knowledge base, and home and community resources.

HANDOUTS Download includes:

  • CS 1 – “Getting to Know You” Interview Assignment

Launch

Give a brief overview of the assignment. This may include discussions on the following points: (1) This interview encourages prospective teachers to engage and connect with a child with whom they have socio-cultural differences.(2) This interview should be a conversation with the child, and that the goal is to learn more about the child. (3) Prospective teachers should be sensitive to child’s desire for privacy and not push topics such as immigration status.


Explore

The exploration portion of the lesson is the interview that happens outside of the methods class and results in either a) a written assignment that is turned in to the methods instructor, or b) an in class quick write about the activity. Both versions of the write-up (out of class or in class quick write) should include the prospective teachers’ responses to the prompts for this activity (See Handout CS 1).


Summarize

The summarizing part of the lesson consists of a debriefing discussion in class on the day the assignment is submitted as to what PSTs learned. If there were several prospective teachers whose field experience was in the same school, it might be good to group them together for the discussion. It might also be effective to group prospective teachers by grade level.

Goals for “Getting to Know You” Interview

  • find out more about the student, including the student’s interests, activities the student engages in outside of school, and what the student identifies as activities at which the student excels. PSTs might find out, for example, what kind of activities the student engages in with the community with friends and families (i.e., does the student play soccer at a local park, go to a community center, where does the student shop, etc.).
  • identify places, locations, and activities in the community that are familiar to the student, and to find out what the student knows about potential mathematical activity in those settings. These could include locations in the neighborhood immediately surrounding the school (i.e., places that are more or less in walking distance), locations/settings in the neighborhood in which the student lives (if that differs from the community surrounding the school), as well as locations/settings in the broader community with which the student is familiar.
  • find out more about the students’ ideas, attitudes and/or dispositions towards mathematics.