Lori Miller
Professor
Education 463
March 8th, 2016
Midterm Paper
For this midterm paper, I observed 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Sheri Migdal at PS 32 the
Belmont School in Bronx, New York. While observing what the classroom looked like, in the top
right corner of the classroom is a display of many math posters. These posters aren’t any
ordinary posters. Mrs. Migdal constructed these posters with her students. The classroom
consists of a math talk poster, math strategies poster, keyword chart for addition and
subtraction poster, and a multiplication strategies poster. These posters are provided for the
students when they are in need of guidance by providing a form of reference for them. On
March 2nd, when I observed the class, the students were learning about fractions. Each student
had there own workbook and each table had di1erent color tiles provided in front of them. Each
color tile represented a di1erent fraction. Purple was for ½, pink was for 1/3, black was for ¼,
green was for 1/5, and blue was for 1/8. Mrs. Migdal was teaching the class how to compare
fractions with the tiles and then getting the students to understand less than or greater symbols
to further fractions.
Mrs. Migdal had the guidance of a workbook to help her give the lesson to the students,
but she bounced around so she wouldn’t only be relying on the text. As she would use the text,
she would stop and ask the students questions in order to get the students thinking about the
rules of fractions. She wanted the students take their time and reflect on what they knew
Lori Miller
Professor
Education 463
March 8th, 2016
before approaching the overall problems. For example, she asked one student what is a
numerator? The student responded by giving the de;nition and then Mrs. Migdal called on
another student and asked him/her what the numerator was of the fraction in the problem.
Then Mrs. Migdal proceeded and asked what is a denominator? All the students were jumping
out of their seats trying to answer the questions. I have never seen so many excited students in
my life. Also to get students motivated and intrigued in learning about fractions, Mrs. Migdal
told the students to think of the fraction tiles as chocolate bars. She asked the students, “which
would you rather eat? And why?”. Not only did the students think of the fractions as chocolate
