Scott Luepke

RED 414
Tuning Protocol Reflection
Fall 2015
The Tuning Protocol project has provided me with many opportunities to grow
as an educator. First of all, looking at video footage of myself has caused me to
analyze my teaching methods, my relationships with my students, and my
unconscious mannerisms, both good and bad. When I have footage to examine, I
can give myself feedback to accompany the usual feedback from my cooperating
teacher that I am used to. The project also gave me opportunities to practice the
valuable skills of giving warm and cool feedback to my colleagues. I appreciate that
I am able to practice the wording that I choose as I identify areas for growth. It is a
delicate process when the goal is being helpful without being offensive. One other
special opportunity the Tuning Protocol has given me regards taking note of
techniques that my colleagues are successfully using with their students. As an
educator, I will encounter students each year unlike any that I have taught in the
past. Therefore, I will always be open to adopting and adapting techniques when I
see that they have worked for colleagues, speakers, or others with similar students.
One element that I would change in teaching this group of lessons in the
future is the amount of time spent with each group. The third graders in the section
I taught made up the half of the class that, historically, had not performed as well
on assessments and standardized tests. Therefore, they needed more attention and
encouragement in order to focus on the material and practice new skills. The
guided math approach being used only gives the teacher one quarter of the 60minute period to instruct each small group. While this is sufficient most days for the
higher-performing students in the other period, it is usually not enough time in my
period. Lengthening the amount of teacher-student time provides more

opportunities for the students to teach each other and for the teacher to help the
students employ their prior knowledge as they master new concepts.
Given the opportunity to teach the "Change Number Stories" lesson again, I
would not have my students use coins to visualize and demonstrate the problems. I
feel that asking the students to demonstrate the addition and subtraction problems
with the coins unnecessarily complicated the exercises. The students who elected
to work through the problems using estimation and traditional paper-and-pencil
algorithms were less frustrated and more efficient in finding solutions.
Finally, I would add manipulatives and visual representations to these lessons
on multi-digit addition and subtraction. Base-ten blocks can be very helpful when
solving number sentences made up of two- and three-digit numbers. It makes a big
difference for some students to be able to see the units and touch them, rather than
just deciding what they need to do with the symbols on the sheet of paper. Another
useful technique is to give the students worksheets of squares that are divided into
hundredths. For an addition problem they can use two colors to shade in the
amounts that they are adding together. For a subtraction problem they can shade
an amount with one color and use a second color to cross off an amount to be
subtracted. My potential changes work together, since more time with the students
would allow me to implement a variety of manipulatives and visual aids to facilitate
student learning.