Week 7 Reflection - Algebra

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This Gif does quite a good job of depicting how I feel when I hear the word "variables". Today in class, we looked at some different strategies/activities to help us understand patterning and algebra. The first thing we looked at was patterning and the demonstration used was the Fibonacci Spiral and I had an extremely hard time understanding the relationship to math/patterning. Ironically, one of the themes we were asked to consider in class this week was "what strategies can you use to help ELL (ESL- English as a Second Language) students in the math classroom"?

After the Fibonacci Spiral presentation I tried to put myself in a student who may not have a great understand of the English language's shoes. I struggled with this concept being someone who has spoken English my entire life, I could not imagine how someone who is new to the language would try and grasp this concept. I started trying to think of what I could do that would make this a little bit more simple to understand? The first thought that occurred to me was "too many words". I was confused as to how this theory was related to math and I feel like if there had been more numbers shown and what exactly these numbers are related to, it would have given me a better idea of what I was doing with it.

Retrieved from MathBlaster

I find that students almost always need the most simple form of something that we can give them. If we don't understand something ourselves, or we don't understand the purpose of something, how can we justify teaching it to our students?

The next concept we looked at today was my favourite term "variables"...solving for X or Y or whatever letter you choose to use as your unknown variable.The photo on the right side of this post depicts how to solve a simple algebraic equation solving for X. You would simply take the unknown variable, move it over to the other side of the equal sign and do the opposite equation to find your answer. Miss Bunz also showed us a neat strategy to help give students a way of visualizing how they might also find the answer for the variable. I personally liked this method and it is something that I foresee myself using in the classroom. If you were to take the same equation, x+8=10 and simply cover the x with your hand and ask your students "what plus 8 equals ten?" it can help take away all of the thoughts of remembering which way you need to move your numbers and what equation it has to become.

This week I feel like one of the most beneficial things I took away from our session was to keep things simple for students, try to avoid over complicating things and to always provide alternative methods for learning and teaching based on your student's needs and comfort levels.

Thank you for reading and I do hope this provides some insight as to how we can all work together to create the next generation of mathematicians!

What is available to help students who have difficulty reading?

Retrieved October 28th from: Pixabay

Retrieved October 28th 2016 from Flickr

This week I wanted to talk about how reading, or lack thereof, seems to be affecting our youth. My placement this year is in a fifth grade classroom, and one thing I have been amazed by, is the number of students with reading disabilities. There are two in my class and this seemed shocking to me, in the fifth grade students are struggling with reading and no alarm bells seem to have gone off yet for anyone regarding this. "What are we doing to help these students?" was the first thing that came to my mind.

I have in fact seen some very interesting resources that are available for these students to use. Every day, students in my class are assigned twenty minutes of "reading for pleasure" after their last nutrition break, during this time, the two students in the class are allowed to use the computer and sign on to a website called TumbleBooks. It is a great resource, provided through the Welland Public Library, and essentially they can pick any book they would like that is available in the E-Book version, there are many categories to choose from, and the book will be read to them as they can listen to it, while the words being read are highlighted on the screen, creating a relationship between what they are hearing and seeing. 

Retrieved October 28th from: Welland Public Library

One thing I love about this resource is the many different options available, students are able to choose the appropriate level of reading, and the style of reading, they can select picture books, Natural Geographic magazines, newspaper clips or comic strips. I feel like it gives them confidence having this at their disposal as they are still able to "read" for pleasure along with the rest of the class instead of being demotivated and getting frustrated by having difficulties reading the "traditional" way. I do believe that these types of resources would help all students, not only students with reading disabilities, become fluent in their reading as hearing someone else read something makes us more aware of what to do with each different type of punctuation mark and sentence structure.

I once read somewhere that "a fluent reader generally translates into a well-written person". This is something I strongly believe in because I have seen it first-hand. My brother has always been extremely interested in reading all different types of books, fiction, mystery, crime and even biographies and history books. I've seen the way he writes and he does not hesitate, he seems to have less issues getting his ideas onto paper and lets his creativity flow.

If students are able to truly become interested in what they are reading, I feel that it would encourage them to become more engaged, if they are provided with many options and feel less "forced" to read, it will allow them to choose more liberally. Just because students have difficulty reading does not mean they are any less interested in it, we mustn't give up on those children as there is nothing worse than discouraging and demotivating a child, we must find ways to encourage them and help guide them in the right direction with all the wonderful tools we have available to us as educators! 

Retrieved October 28th 2016 from: Flickr

Blog Post Week 1- Assessment

Retrieved October 28th 2016 From: JPhotostyle

As I make my way into the seventh week of the Teacher Education Program, I am starting to finally get the hang of it. This week, we started our assessment course, and honestly up to this point, I have not had a tremendous amount of time in the classroom setting. I have been observing in my placement school, however have only had the opportunity to be in the classroom three times so far.


I have noticed that teachers seem to be straying away from the "traditional" testing methods and have become more open to the concepts of differentiated assessment. I do find the task of assessment to be daunting as you need to consider the needs of each individual students, and there may be students in the classroom that have different ways of portraying their ideas.


I remember being tested in school and remember how anxious the traditional method would make me. Being formally tested can be nerve-wracking at any age, even as a university student, the thought of sitting in a gym with hundreds of other students and having the pressure of being done on time makes it seem like it goes by so much faster.


I do believe that traditional assessment can take away from students, it can take away their creativity and the nervousness they may be experiencing may hold them back. Throughout the year I feel like there should be many different options available to students so that they will be assessed in different ways. Traditional testing is necessary in some aspects as you do need to know your students ability level and to make sure that they are being tasked appropriately, however I feel like individual creativity is becoming such a big part of today's education that every student should have the opportunity to be evaluated based on something that would come across as slightly less daunting.


I do look forward to having the opportunity to be in my classroom for my placement more frequently as I have not yet had the chance to experience my associate teacher's methods of assessment and I feel like there is a lot I can learn from someone who has been in the role for a long time. I do feel that there is a lot of pressure on students to succeed, and that the social standards of success can bring a student down if they are not graded where they thought they should have been.


Based on that thought, this is something that does appear at every grade level, we are all so focused on making sure that we receive a level 4 grade, however are we leaving ourselves enough time to maintain a healthy lifestyle? Something I would like to focus on when I am in my teaching block and even observing in my classroom is how effective different types of assessment can be. Is traditional testing the best way to go or will students strive through different methods?

Retrieved October 28th 2016 from: Flickr

Week 6 Reflection, Ratios and Proportions

 

Let's talk about Ratios

Retrieved October 2016 from: Wikipedia

What is this interesting little symbol you ask? This is what we talked about this week, ratios. What is a Ratio? According to "Making Math Meaningful" a ratio is a multiplicative comparison between two numbers. To explain that in more "English" language terms, if we look at the ratio on the right, it can be read as four to three, which can also translate to, there 4 four girl bathrooms for every 3 boy bathrooms. When I was younger, if I were to look at this I would have been extremely intimidated. If I must admit, even during our math refresher course that we had to take, I did struggle the first time through with the ratios and fractions section.

Retrieved October 2016 from: Pixabay

How have I become to feel slightly more confident with these? I have had to observe many different ways of trying to interpret ratios now. This week in class, we had the opportunity to observe our fellow classmates presentations and one stuck with me. I really enjoy cooking and baking and one of my classmates incorporated baking into her activity which really helped me grasp the concept. I personally find that if I can relate something to a real life situation, I will understand it better and remember it better in the future.

I feel like this realization has been personally extremely beneficial and it is something I will strive for in the classroom as a teacher. If students can relate what they are working on in the classroom to something in their every day life, it may help them grasp the concept and be able to create a mental image of something to help them work their way through the problem. I personally feel like this will help students gain a conceptual understanding of ratios and proportions.

Throughout the course, we have to complete 3 forums where we play a math learning game, and then we write about what we thought of it. Coincidentally, I had picked to do mine this week not knowing ahead of time that it would be based on ratios and proportions. Am I ever glad that I picked this week, not only did it give me the opportunity to practice, but it showed me what is available out there as learning tools for students nowadays.

I don't necessarily think that this is a game that I would play as a teaching tool, however I do feel that it could be extremely beneficial in helping students with their speed at determining equivalent fractions. One thing that I am a firm believer of is that practice makes perfect and if students can play games like these, enjoy themselves, and practice their fractions, ratios and proportions at the same time, it is a win-win situation.

Retrieved October 2016 from: Arcademic Skill Builders

Thanks for reading and I hope this will give my fellow teacher candidates who might be slightly apprehensive about math a little bit of an encouragement, because if I can do it, honestly anyone can!

Media Strand Blog Post

How Media Literacy is Impacting Today's Classroom

The beginning of this Teacher Education program has been a huge eyes opener for me. I graduated from my Bachelor's degree in 2014 and decided to take some time off to try and decide what it was I going to spend the rest of my life doing. After venturing around a little bit, I finally came to the conclusion that I wanted to be teaching! Getting back into student role? Not as easy as I thought...

It is unbelievable to see how quickly things are changing in the world of education. The amount of technology I have seen implemented into the classroom has taken some readjustment on my part. One thing I have appreciated though is the fact that we are being provided the opportunity to explore all of these new outlets available. 

We have taken on a project this semester called our Genius Hour Research. This has given me the opportunity to use different form of media to create and explore different forms of media literacy.

           

This video is just an example of one of the different things I have explored so far. I was given the task of creating a movie trailer, this assignment gave me pause. I had to sit down and think of the message I wanted to portray, as in a movie trailer you only have a minute or two to get your idea across and everyone will interpret that message differently.

After doing some research, I came across this article that I found extremely insightful. This article talks about how teachers are now simply guiding their students and don't need to know the answers to everything anymore, they provide students with appropriate tools to find the answers themselves. The article states that the goal of media literacy is to understand how people can interpret different forms of media.

In the Ontario Language Curriculum it talks about how students should be able to create a variety of media texts for different purposes and audiences, using appropriate forms, conventions, and techniques. 

Retrieved October 17th 2016 from curriculum

We have had ample opportunities to use many different outlets to get create media literacy. Things such as Popplet are a great way for students to create an idea map and organize their ideas when they are working on a project and to present those ideas. I find that Popplet is great because the students who are analyzing the media cannot really stray far from the creator's idea or opinion.I have appreciated having the opportunity to explore all of these tools available to us because it has given me the opportunity to learn new things while I'm at it. Many of the apps available force collaboration and group work, they allow students to have a visual and written connection to their work and allow a little bit more creativity.

Media Literacy has been much more complex to learn about that I would have originally expected it to be, however, going with the theme of my readjustment period, everything has been a lot different than I expected it to be. Now that I have seen the tip of the iceberg, I am eager to implement some of the things I have learned into my practicum, unfortunately I have only been in my classroom a few times and have not had much opportunity to test out different strategies, but it is something I look forward to doing!

Retrieved October 17th 2016 from http://www.teachinctrl.org/lessons/mediabetweenlines.php

Math Reflection Week 5

Let's Talk About Integers!

Retrieved October 8th, 2016 From: SparkNotes

This week we had the chance to talk about integers and do some activities in class using some manipulatives to better understand them ourselves. As we worked with the manipulatives, I was able to see how much easier it was to solve problems with the concrete, visual aid. However, I can see that it would be very easy to become dependent on those manipulatives which could be problematic because we need to know how to solve problems without always having them at our fingertips. How can we be sure that our future students won't become dependent on these manipulatives?

This is a tricky subject because we live in a day and age where people are used to having many different things available to them. Everyone has a calculator on their phone and children are getting them younger and younger, so how do we make sure our students can solve problems without relying on their devices or manipulatives? I personally believe that being a visual learner is beneficial, being able to picture something in your head to get the help you need was always enough to get me through. 

On page 352 of Making Math Meaningful, they talk about what appropriate manipulatives would be, there is a great list of helpful tools that can be used to sort of "replace" the calculator. Things such a number lines might be easier to be less dependent on as it would be easier to picture a number line in your head and jump the numbers. 

Making the calculator less available to students might help them become less and less dependent on the manipulatives because they would be learning how to work their way through their problems step by step and and learning the necessary processes. 

Making sure your students gain a conceptual understanding of concepts is also an important step because they may be able to complete an activity or solve a problem, but they may not know why or how they're doing it. Exponents are one of the more tricky concepts to grasp, there is a common mistake that when a student sees 5 to the power of 2 --5(2)-- they think it is 5X2 and not 5X5. I personally feel like one of the easiest ways to explain this dilemma is to have the students write them out completely, 5(2) would become 5X5 or 5(4) would become 5X5X5X5 as you have 5 multiplied by 5, 4 times. 

Retrieved October 8th, 2016 From: Learning with Math

This image depicts how I personally like to break down exponents. 

This last couple weeks has given me the opportunity to become much more confident in my ability to not only teach math, but to understand math as well. Opening yourself up to new concepts and new ideas can be extremely beneficial and having the necessary support and tools provided to me has made it much easier to become open to new ideas and ways of doing things. 

Having a bad experience in math class can really affect how a student looks at it for the rest of their lives. Let's change the negative "stigma" that surrounds math, make it fun and encourage students in the right ways to always express their feelings and ideas in the classroom! There is no wrong answer when someone can justify the reason they came up with the answer they have come to!