Reflection on GAME Plan

One of the biggest things that I liked about developing the GAME plan was that it made me more accountable. I had to set specific goals as well as plan how I was going to achieve them. Having a plan in mind makes it easier to accomplish. My GAME plan is something that will be a work in progress. I think I had a lot of growth in terms of providing my students with experiences that allowed them to be creative and see how technology is useful in Math. I still struggle with how to balance the student-directed learning with technology and having my students learn how to compute the algorithms without a calculator. I have found that if I use technology as an introduction to a unit or a summative activity at the end of the unit, the students are still learning the algorithms but also using technology.

I have learned that it is not as hard to incorporate technology as I once thought and through the lessons that I completed with my students, I also learned that I need to provide them with more background knowledge before moving on because these are new experiences for most of them. My students are also not accustomed to PBL lessons so they need more guidance at first than they’re supposed to but the more they have those experiences, the easier it will be. I can’t shy away from doing those things because the students aren’t used to it.

In terms of my instructional practices, I am starting to give up some of my work and give more freedom and responsibility to my students. They obviously have more fun using technology so I just have to ensure they learn the standards. There is more planning and preparation as the teacher but during the actual instruction I want to take more of a backseat and be a facilitator rather than the provider of all information. This course has opened my eyes to new technologies and new ways to incorporate the technology that we have been using. Our school doesn’t have much technology so I need those creative things to help me out. Overall this course has allowed me to grow as a teacher and thus better help my students.