Strategy Lesson Reflection

After conducting the strategy lesson today, I thought that it went really well because it was a fun, interactive activity and I think the student’s really enjoyed it. I think it is a fun review game that can be a fun activity to implement in my future classes. I liked the one adjustment that we made at the last minute, to switch up how the game is played. The switch allowed every student to participate equally. The challenging thing for me and the one thing that I didn’t do well, was walking around the classroom to monitor. I did when the game was being played, but when I was presenting, I found myself in “presentation” mode rather than “teacher” mode. If this was a middle school classroom, I would need to be walking around the classroom for classroom management purposes. I also feel that I could have explained the game a little better. One thing I learned was that as a teacher, you need to be ready and willing to make adjustments. We were prepared to play the game two different ways and ultimately decided to play it in pairs rather than groups. I think that in the end, that was the right move, but being prepared to do it both ways allows you to make adjustments if you feel that you need to.            

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Why Are There so Many Words in Math?: Resource #5

https://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/VM/0201-sep2012/VM0201Why.pdf

This is sort of a long read, but if you want to save it for later, it has some really good information that you can use for your math class in the future. This article talks about how kids have a hard task in math of trying to learn mathematical concepts while also trying to understand the discipline specific vocabulary used to describe these concepts. For example, will students be able to understand linear functions, if your example problem includes a description of the German Autobahn? What if they don’t know what the German Autobahn is? To help the teachers stay focused on building conceptual knowledge while supporting word learning and decreasing the vocabulary in the curriculum, the 5 C’s strategy was created. The 5 C’s are Concepts (What mathematical words are in this lesson), Content (What subject-matter words in this lesson), Clarify (Which words should I mention or clarify), Cut (Which words should I rephrase or eliminate), and Construct (Which words should I teach).

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Synthesis Blog: Differentiation

One thing that I noticed that Ms. M did in terms of differentiation, was that she asked questions at different cognitive levels because she understood that she had kids in her class that were at different learning levels. She asked higher leveled questions, but she also asked questions on all levels so that all of the kids in the class could understand and form their own answers. They were also discussing the questions and answers amongst their group to hear other student’s answers and thoughts. She had some students in her class that were “life skills” kids and others who are more advanced, so she catered to all of them by the types of questions that she asked. She also stated that she provided the class with vocab cards with pictures, so that the kids in her class who struggled to read would have a visual representation of what they were learning, so that they wouldn’t have to struggle with the words. She even found the pictures to be more fun and that all of the kids actually loved them, which led her to make the puzzle activity. She also used differentiation by the activities that she had the kids do. There were kids reading questions and discussing their answers with the group. They were also experimenting with hands on equipment and even going up to the interactive smart board to manipulate certain variables to see what the effect was. So, she was getting the students engaged by incorporating different activities that helped provide visual, verbal, and physical learning styles for kids who learn in different ways. There were also multimodal skills that had to be used as the kids operated the smart board. With all of these activities, there were different levels of questions and different activities being performed so that all kids were able to learn and engage in a way that best suited them, so that each and every one of them could understand and engage with the material to learn it.  

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