Final Synthesis Blog

Before I walked into this class, I was not sure what to expect at all. I thought it would be about our own literacy skills because it was a requirement for us as teachers. After the first class though, I realized it was about the different literacy skills used in each content area.  This truly has been the most beneficial class I have taken in all of college! I loved learning the different strategies and I think our professor was the absolute best. In this class, we discussed how to include literacy in class through using good teaching strategies. Our professor led by example in order for us to experience it as a student. Now these straggles are not just simply cognitive but as our textbook says, includes "instructional strategies for teachers use in the classroom". Some of these strategies were KWL, turn-and-talk, dramatic role play, and front-loading with images. Discussing the pros and cons of these strategies was one of my favorite parts of this class because I feel as though I have learned very good instructional strategies to help my students. I am excited to use these in a class one day.  

Also our book for this class was called Subjects Matter, and it was a very enjoyable read especially since we did not have to read the entire book. We only read what was necessary to our learning on strategies and literacy skills in math and science. We got to read books and find workbook pages to determine what skills were necessary to read and understand those passages. Many times we found that math and science problems need evaluating and analyzing skills that many students do not know how to do. These in-class activities were always shocking to me when I saw how necessary reading was. One time, we looked at standardized testing and the need to teach students how to take these sorts of tests. There were so many problems that we annotated and looked at what literacy skills students needed other than that specific content. We also learned very practical ways to implement these literacy skills into class. 

The first way was book clubs which I think were really fun and students would love, however it also is the one activity that I think would be the hardest to do in my own math classroom. I enjoyed learning about book clubs, but probably not my favorite one to use in the future. I do think that the podcasts we created though are a great use of technology to use in class. I would definitely use this in my future classroom. All of these super amazing examples of what to use in class is why I feel as though this was the best class I took. My students will benefit from my knowledge I gained in taking this course. 

Also our professor was the most engaging teacher I've ever had in college! I really learned so much through watching and observing his actions as a teacher. He was friendly and made us feel welcome and happy in this class. 

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Art and Literacy

I found these pieces of armor at the Georgia Museum of Art, and immediately had the great idea of using old armor to study for a history class.

First, I want to explain what I chose at the museum! The picture beside the armor is a description of everything included in this case. There is a golden charm that has a picture of Prince Sergei, helmet of Her Majesty's Horse Guards, sword with tassel, and the Cavalry Guard's cartridge pouch and chest armor. All of these artifacts are from the late 19th century. This armor is old Russian uniforms.

When I saw this, I couldn't help but think about the video we watched in class of a trailer for a video game. We discussed the idea or armor and how it has changed over the years. I imagined bringing together the video of the present warfare with a study on real pieces from the past. Students would then get to create their own armor they believe is best suited for them. We could dig into the history behind the armor as well and look into who was fighting back and then and for what reason. It would fit perfectly inside a history class on war.

Another project could be using this armor to determine the rest of the culture. I would have my students try to create the scene of the late 19th century in Russia. Research what was going on and create a video or presentation of why this type of armor was used and how it was made. I think there are many avenues that we could use this relic from the Museum in the classroom!

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Book Clubs!

The past two weeks we have been given the opportunity to participate in a book club, which I think was a very effective way for us to be able to experience this type of strategy. It gave me an extra perspective on this strategy rather than simply discussing what students would do and the potential pros and cons. I have been able to actually experience as a student what is exciting about this strategy and what is not helpful. The first thing I loved was being able to chose what I read. I was able to pick out which book was most exciting to me and read it with another group of people! This idea of letting students have options is honestly a very great tool for motivating students and helping with classroom management. They have been given their desire to feel as though they have some control. I got to choose chasing Vermeer, which is an absolute great book!

At first I wasn't sure how I could use it in my math class, however through discussing it with my group I think there are some great ways to make this beneficial. I'm not completely positive if I would use this specific book because I may not be teaching geometry. I highly encourage geometry teachers to definitely look at this book as a resource. There are some really good ideas for big group projects in this book such as making and decoding messages with geometric shapes. It has great connections to the real world and makes math into an exciting adventure

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Book Clubs

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching-blog/

This link above is to a website that is full of really cool resources for teachers on books. It has a blog that teachers can write about thing they have done in the classroom, and a page that takes you to a list of lesson plans incorporating books. One specific one I found was for a science class. The book they read was The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth, and they then had an assignment to create their own  trips to the center of the earth. They will have to design their transportation and then record 'what they see' as they travel to the center of earth. I really like this lesson plan because it allows for enjoyable reading in their content area as well as an exciting assignment that students would enjoy. I highly encourage everyone to look at the different resources this website has for teachers to use.

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Differentiation Synthesis Blog

My favorite part of this video was when "the students were actually doing science" because they were engaging in an activity to prove a theory and concept of science. Evaporation is not something that students usually do a 'science experiment' for since its a simple vocabulary word which is how I learned it. However, this teacher has her students go beyond memorizing the meaning of the word but helping them see this concept become real right in front of their eyes. I love how engaging this type of learning is and it often is multi-modal literacy. They are participating in hands-on activities and critical thinking through technology and through their communication in groups. I believe in hands-on engagement is going to be one of best tools to use in order to keep the students motivated in learning. Gaining a students focus is more than half of the battle because when they are attentive to the topic, they will have at least some interest and an ability to learn. The students in her class spoke about how they loved school! Also I think their interaction with the technology on her board was a super effective idea for creating equal participation and engagement. Students can use the board to interact with the concepts which furthers their thought processes on a topic. I would love to see how this works in a middle school math classroom. But I do know that from the classroom I was in on Wednesday, the students do not keep thinking the way we desire when left to simply complete a couple problems. In their groups while working on math, their minds were definitely on other things and liked to talk. I think activities that require a more engaged thinking are necessary.

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Resource Blog!

I found an article that discusses how different words in math can be very confusing. It talks about how words such as similar, combine, product, height, dividend, and operation. Each of these words have different meanings in everyday english then they do in math, which is why readigng strategies for a math class are so important. Below is an example of a frayer model which is a way to help students understand math words in a very direct manner. So whenever the read a 'little' math word they will not be confused to its meaning by remembering the models they correct for the words they need to know. I think this an easy way for teachers to help their students grasp an understanding on words. 

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http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/105137/chapters/Reading-in-the-Mathematics-Classroom.aspx

Reflection

I honestly really enjoyed creating the lesson plan with Hannah! It was exciting to find ways to use the strategy we were teaching within the lesson. I think that our desire to guide our classmates through the second KWL was not as perfect as we had planned which I think was due to picking a random topic in a Math class. I think if we would have looked into the background of symmetry more, we could have given a more accurate example of what it would look like to use this strategy in math class while students have just learned multiple concepts relating to the topic that was in question. It was challenging to come up with guiding questions for the knowledge and want to learn columns, and I would definitely spend more time on that part specifically in the future. But overall, I truly think that Hannah and I worked really well together and had fun creating a lesson. Going through the powerpoint and discussing what points we wanted to highlight went really for both us together, and I believe we executed that effectively in class. However, answering comments that were made in class was more difficult than I had imagined. It was hard to know what to say after someone made a point that agreed with what we were talking about. It was just weird because I realized I didn't know what else to say other than 'yes, great point' with an awkward pause moving on to the next question. This is something I hope I will be able to learn and get better at is responding to what students say in class. 

Word Count: 265 

P.S. Yes this is late :( I forgot to post it this morning 

Resource Blog #3

https://minds-in-bloom.com/implementing-giant-graphs/

I found a blog by a teacher who is passionate teaching her students in a way they will truly understand! Her blog is full of a ton of great ideas, but one that specifically caught my attention was something that related to a discussion we had in class about bringing the topics into real life. This teacher created a large graph on which students could actually stand on and be a part of and construct graphs on their own. This create collaboration and communication! After the group activity of hands-on learning, she has them answer questions about the deeper meaning as an assessment to evaluate whether the activity was successful in their understanding. She uses this time as a class discussion to continue their learning rather than as simply something to check for comprehension.

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Textbooks.... How to use them?

According to Subjects Matter, there are multiple ways to help your students figure out the textbook they will be using for that class. One of the options is actually something my teachers this semester are using in their classes. Most of my teachers have substituted textbooks with other materials that they have decided will be more valuable for us. Our math textbook was written by our Math teacher just like the teacher in the Subjects Matter book, and our other two professors both picked out specific articles and books for us to read throughout the semester. Obviously they had to research and read these materials to determine if they were going to be the best option for class. Honestly, this opened my eyes to how willing we need to be as teachers to search for the bestsellers resources for our students. The materials given to us are not always the options we should choose.

One of my favorite activities to use with a textbook was the textbook circles, however I was not exactly sure what this would like in a math class when I was reading about the activity. After I was thinking about it, I was coming up with ideas and ways that it would work in a math class. I think that one of the best ways is to have them read through a section that has been tough for them to understand. I would create guiding questions for them to ask each other and determine what the key words were for them to understand. Then I would have a problem for them to solve together to help them walk through the concepts they read and see if they were able to comprehend the section.

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How many resources for students are needed?

http://matheminutes.blogspot.com
This link is a blog that I found through an IB Math teacher resources page. I wanted to post the entire blog because it has so many articles and ideas for extra materials to use in class. The teachers posted different teaching methods and ideas they used in class for others to look at and potentially use. There are some with different types of readings or even some with different types of activities to use in class rather than constantly using the textbook. It is a much better idea to use several avenues to teach from since many students learn without the textbook. This source is specifically for math classes, so I think it will be super helpful for us to have this for examples of what teachers do in their classrooms.





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Struggling Readers

An article we read in EMAT 5280 discussed that students make each other feel less comfortable answering questions in groups because there is an atmosphere of status levels that correlate to the intelligence of each student. I was wondering what the best way to combat this was until I read chapter 11 in our subjects matter book. There is a teacher who groups her students into four types of intelligence including relational, organizational, analytical, and high energy. The students are able to understand each other's differences and utilize strengths in their groups once these four types have been identified and pointed out to them. This is huge especially when some students are not proficient readers. We should not make them feel bad about their reading level instead encouraging each other to help them become better readers. Encourage the students by having different level of materials in order to display their ability to read some of the passages. Defeated students will not grow without encouragement in what they can do already. This chapter offered many strategies on how to help struggling readers, and almost every example was in a class that was not an English Language Arts class. Reading a word problem in Math has a very different thought process than in ELA or history. As teachers it is our job to model for our students the correct way to think through a specific passage in our specific content area. A math problem will require the strategy of deciphering what is important information in order to not get confused on the extra information. I remember in my Math classes mixing up what was important and getting problems wrong because I missed an important piece of information. These strategies are taught not expectations.

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This video came from the Reading Rockets page off of the WETA website. The reason I picked this video is because despite the fact that it is for elementary students, it offers valid points for middle grade teachers to use as well. She was explaining how we really need to help them group words together which is a big part of teaching them how to read especially in a math or science class. They need to be able to read a sentence and bring in other concepts with just that one sentence because often times we need to use multiple steps or concepts in a math or science class. Grouping words and concepts is a valuable lesson to learn when reading even though it can be hard.

Reading in school goes so much further than in English class. In order to learn effectively in all other subjects, we must be able to read the passages. However, each subject has a different purpose and prior knowledge which makes a huge impact on the ability to comprehend the information. I honestly did not think about how much prior knowledge is needed for every subject that makes it harder to comprehend a passage. This prior knowledge creates a network of information which is called a schema. This schema is necessary to build more information on top of it. In our EMAT class, we are working on looking at the standards, and discussing how specific standards from the previous years are needed in order to learn the new standard for the new grade level. This means as teachers we cannot assume that they remember the background information and might need to spend some time helping them remember previous standards.

The students might be able to answer a set of reading questions using context clues, but that does not mean they understood the new concept. Reading is a staged process in which there must be some sort of activating prior knowledge within the process. Therefore, reading is specific for each subject which means that all teachers need to be prepared to teach students how to read specifically for that subject. As students read, they need tools and materials to read with in order to help them interpret and analyze the passage. This might take them beyond the standards, but it is necessary for them to understand the different passages. As we support their reading then we also help them engage more thoroughly and deeply in the subject we are teaching. This is something that I will definitely want to make sure I do in my future math class.

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