Nichole  Oswald								     Journal 8
MED300							Dates:  10/30/07 & 11/1/07

	This week at Lafayette went very well.  Tuesday I taught a different group of students.  I was a little concerned with how the students were going to respond, because I had only worked with one of the students before.  However, the class went surprisingly well!  We were able to cover a ton of material, including slope-intercept form, parallel and perpendicular lines.  The students really seemed to grasp the concepts, and many of them were actively participating.  I started off the lesson with a story about driving and how streets are set up.  This connected to the students’ prior knowledge because they are aware of how Elmwood Ave, Lafayette Ave and Grant St are set up.  After the story we worked through the questions as a class, where the students did the majority of explaining what to do.  We were able to complete the entire lesson.  I made modifications to the original lesson plans by combining parallel and perpendicular lines into one lesson, before I presented the material to the class.
	Thursday also went very well, even though there were only three students.  The lesson was on solving multi-step inequalities as well as graphing the solution on a number line.  The students were able to make the connection between how to solve equalities and relate it to solving inequalities.  We worked through many examples as a class; students also came up to the board to work through them.  Alex actually knew how to graph the solutions before I explained what to do.  I was very impressed.  I know the students have seen this material last year and for some reason or another they are taking the class (i.e. they didn’t comprehend the material the first time they took it, frequently absent, lack of effort).  However, when we get to a topic that the students really understand or remember, their confidence in what they are doing noticeably increases.  This is great because the students participate more and contribute a lot more to the class.  I also notice that once they have this confidence it carries through into future lessons.  They don’t seem to become discouraged if they get an answer wrong because they always try again.  This is great because the students seem to be very comfortable in the classroom setting that we have set up.