What were you unprepared to handle in your assigned classroom and how did you respond? What strategies did you use to figure out what you needed to do?

The main thing that I was unprepared for was the amount of noise that was in the classroom.  The students are constantly talking, and that is not something that I am used to back home in the States.  Whats crazy about that is that the students and the teachers are able to still be productive in that environment.  At first I felt very anxious about how was I going to be able to teach if the students were not paying attention, but what I soon realized was that just because the noise level is high, that doesnt mean the students arent paying attention.  Once I realized that, my anxiety level dropped and I knew that I could use that to my advantage.  My main strategy for responding to this action is do lots of group activities to give the students things to talk about.  When I taught last week, there was group work during each part of the lesson. In the beginning of the lesson the students had to work out problems in pairs and then switch with another group and check each others work, during the lesson I was constantly asking question in a call and response form to let the students answer and feel like they are part of the class.  As a wrap up activity, I had a chart that had a bunch of blanks that the students had to fill out, and they could talk to each other and fill out the whole chart.  I think that is going to be the outline for most of my classes, have group work in the beginning and end, and have lots of call and response during the notes/lecture time so that way the students will talk like they usually do, but keep them focused on the math at the same time.