8P29 Post 7

Anonymous. "Teacher Lesson Plan Ecard." Retrieved from
http://www.teachjunkie.com/filing-cabinet/teaching-realities/
NOTE: This is not what happened to me when working on my
lesson plan haha!

           It’s getting to be an exciting time in teacher’s college because we’re starting to ramp up to actually teaching lessons to students! Woo! All the foundation work in every class, not just 8P29, is finally going to be applied and put to a practical use.

This week I worked on my first draft of the math lesson plan we’re have to complete. I actually had a lot of fun doing it, and have ideas for how to create follow up lessons to start creating a unit. It was not without its difficulties though. I decided to make my lesson as practical as possible, so I tailored it for the students in my placement (a grade 4/5 split). I was initially stumped because I wasn’t sure how to create activities that didn’t dumb things down for the grade 5s but wouldn’t be alienating for the grade 4s. Luckily the topic of my lesson (introduction to telling time) has associated learning expectations that are similar. The only difference between the time expectations for grade 4 and 5 is that grade 4s need to identify time on a clock down to a minute, and grade 5s need to be able to identify seconds as well. Within the direct instruction portion of the lesson, I can still teach all the students the same things, but then ask the grade 5 students of the class some more complicated questions about calculating time. Grade 4s can feel free to answer but precedence is on a grade 5 answering the question correctly. We’ll see how that actually works in practice, but in theory it should turn out alright!

I can tell that 8P29 is rubbing off on me because during my lesson plan, I automatically started thinking of multiple strategies students could use to work on their homework problems, which is not a level of reflection I had at the start of the year. Visual aids and manipulatives never really helped me that much in math when I was a child, so I wasn’t in the habit of thinking about using or talking about those methods, but now it is becoming part of my automatic brainstorming about activities to try to incorporate those elements into lessons **when possible**.

On the topic of manipulatives and visual aids in math, one suggestion from the textbook I enjoyed the most this week was using balance scales and paper bags to help students visualize balancing equations in the patterning and algebra unit. Using this method, I feel like students of many ages and abilities could grasp how approach finding x in a problem because it shows the direct consequence of what happens when you don’t balance the equation (literally!).

I wouldn’t mind testing out this method on my friend’s 8-year-old daughter, as the last time she was over, once she finished her place value homework, she expressed an interest in figuring out linear algebra problems (isn’t it amazing how children natural want to know things and challenge themselves?). She was able to grasp a fairly straightforward question (n +5 = 7) by counting that 7 is 2 more than 5, so n is 2. But when she asked for a harder one, I gave her n + 4 =11-3, and she was having a bit of trouble understanding balancing. I think with the scales and paper bags this would be much more evident for her.

There’s so much more I want to talk about; I’ve found this course inspired my creativity, something I honestly didn’t think would happen with teaching math, but I’ll leave it at this for now.

Part of the In-Crowd: Multilevel Reading so Everyone Can Join In

Eletu, Olu. "Alphabet, Children." March 17, 2015.
Retrieved from https://stocksnap.io/photo/Q5FJUK9OFH

No one likes to feel left out. And for children, many of who want nothing more than to achieve the status of “fitting in”, this is an especially concerning matter. You want to wear what your friends are wearing, have the same toys and gadgets that your friends have. So what do you do as a self-conscious child when for whatever reason, be it giftedness, a learning disability, whatever, you find yourself ahead or behind the pack? You feel awkward, like something is wrong with you. As educators, we can help with that. No, we probably can’t convince a student’s parents to get them those Nike shoes that everyone else in the class has, or those special edition, holographic Pokemon cards, but what we can do is help students feel included in classroom activities, even if the student might be reading at a grade or two below or above the rest of the class.

How do we do this?

By introducing multilevel reading in the classroom.

Catherine Cornford at University of Ottawa wrote a brief, but helpful research monograph about multilevel reading called “What Works? Using Multilevel Texts—Supporting Literacy in the Inclusive Classroom.” In it, she argues that one of the reasons for lack of student engagement in reading is that the text is either too easy or difficult and provides some useful suggestions to how educators can incorporate multilevel texts or scaffolding into the classroom so students can read and learn together, regardless of reading level. You can download the PDF here.

So how could multilevel fiction help?

Multilevel fiction may be written at different levels of complexity, so students can all be reading the same story. They may also use multiple genres or writing styles to communicate information, for example, one version of the text is in verse and another version is in prose. Some texts may even use fiction and non-fiction, for example incorporating a narrative and informational text. The Ontario curriculum’s Reading strand expects students read and understand a variety of texts, literary, graphic, and information, and to understand how different text forms and stylistic elements help communicate meaning. Studying a multilevel text exposes students to multiple writing genres and styles, thus giving them versatility in their reading comprehension.

Can I still be inclusive even if the text isn’t designed to be multilevel?

Even if a text isn’t specifically multilevel, teachers can still be inclusive with reading in the classroom. One of the ways to do that is through reading buddies, where a teacher would pair up students of different reading levels and abilities to participate in a shared reading activity. This can give a student of a lower reading level exposure to a more challenging text, but with some guidance along the way. The student of the higher reading level still benefits, because one consolidates knowledge through explaining it to others.

In summary

We all have different skill sets and aptitudes and in the inclusive classroom, there’s no reason why we have to segregate students based on their reading level. Providing a narrative that scales according to reading level makes all students feel like they’re part of the group and can increase reading engagement. I get so excited when I see students interested in what they’re reading and eager to share what they’ve read with their peers. I think everyone should have that opportunity, whether they’re reading Seuss or Shakespeare. 

8P29 Week 6 Post

This was the week I did my learning activity assignment, which consists of a 10-minute presentation where you lead your peers through an activity you could do with students and the different strategies for solving the problem. It went surprisingly better than I thought it would; I had had nightmares about it the night before, and usually presentations don’t faze me. This week’s theme was on proportional reasoning and includes questions on ratio, rate, and percent. Proportional reasoning can be a trick thing to teach students because it relies on students being able to change the way they think from multiplicative to additive thinking, and also relies on a firm understanding and snap knowledge of multiplication, division, and factors. Considering how many students (and adults!) rely on calculators to do even basic math, this can be a bit of a challenge. But with the proper practise and scaffolding through the use of charts, manipulatives and hundreds grids anything is possible.

Pythagoras and the Ratios book cover. Retrieved from
http://www.amazon.com/Pythagoras-Ratios-A-Math-Adventure/dp/1570917760

I liked exploring the different children’s books recommended at the end of the proportional thinking chapter of Small’s Making Math Meaningful. Pythagoras and the Ratios by Julie Ellis is a fun way to introduce children to mathematical history and the idea of ratios. The book deals more with ratios in musical chords than it does with other types of ratios, but I think that’s still acceptable because it can show the student that math doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but actually shows up in all parts of their life. Something I’m learning through my placement is that it’s often hard for teachers to fit everything they want to teach into a day, because activities inevitably almost always take longer than estimated. That is why it’s a good idea to integrate subjects as much as possible. Have students read about book about science or math, that way you kill two birds with one stone.

The activity I used in my ratio presentation had to do with adjusting recipes based on serving size, but I brainstormed a couple other ideas I think students might find fun. Having seen the movie Antman a few months ago, it got me thinking about how an ant’s relative strength is much much higher compared to its mass than a human’s strength is. It might be fun to learn about different animals and ratios by finding other animals and insects with “superpowers” like the ants and figuring out how that strength scales if that animal was the size of a human. I haven’t fleshed out this idea though, so it may be too complicated to put into practice in a classroom, we’ll see.  This year is going to be full of trial and error, but I don’t mind. No one ever learned anything doing the same thing every day.  

8P29 Week 5 Post

This week the focus was on integers. Integers aren’t too bad once you learn the rules. The trick is to understand the logic behind the rules, otherwise they become harder to remember and you can mix them up depending on what operation you’re completing (for example, thinking two negatives make a positive when you’re subtracting, rather than multiplying or dividing integers). But once students understand the rules, it becomes simple computation, something students would have been doing for years already.

I may have mentioned this before, but I have to say that Marian Small’s book Making Math Meaningful is a tremendous resource for pre-service teachers. Everything in the book is laid out clearly and there are plenty of class activity ideas within each chapter. If you’re a pre- or in-service teacher looking to improve their skills teaching math concepts, go out and buy this book, you won’t regret it.  Small’s chapter on integers is no exception to the rule. She suggests a fun card game called Integro to help students practice adding and subtracting integers. Have an Integro tournament in your class to see who will reign supreme as Imperator Integro (that’s a working title for the winner of the tournament, message me if you think of a cool one).

Making Math Meaningful by Marian Small p. 327

It’s easier to teach if you can get students to connect the concepts to something in the “real world”. Small suggests temperature, altitude, and sea level, but I think the real world example I like the best is debt. One, it’s good in general to teach students that debt is an awful hole that makes you think you have money, but really you don’t, and two, you can apply the debt situation to any of the operations. Here’s a quick example:

If I’m broke and I borrow 5 from Tony and 3 from Pauly, how much total debt do I have?

(-5) + (-3) = (-8)

Here you can see adding together two negatives puts you deeper in the hole, because I start at 0 and now I owe money I don’t have. Now let’s say I have a windfall:

Tony, in his magnanimity, has forgiven my debt, but Pauly still wants me to deliver. However, Silvio also gave me $4 birthday money as a gift. Now what’s my total debt?

(-8) – (-5) + (+4) = (+1)

See, I paid back Pauly, because he was starting to scare me a little (his eyes get all buggy when he’s angry), which makes me debt free, and also not broke anymore (thanks Silvio!). Putting it in a story like this makes it make a lot more sense than trying to memorize a set of rules. Add in some manipulatives and a number line (number line is key), and your lesson would hit a lot of bases.

What this is teaching me about teaching math is that there’s a lot more to students learning rules than them just learning the rules to certain concepts. Without the “why” there is very little retention, or common mistakes and mix-ups can occur. The “why” doesn’t have to be tremendously complex, but without context math is meaningless punching in figures like computers, and we aren't trying to make students into automatons, but autonomous, curious, problem-solving individuals.    

Genius Hour Update 3

This has been a productive week for my Genius Hour. I completed the movie trailer and have written my TED talk (although I haven’t actually presented it yet). Apart from the Learning Object, which I will complete within the next few days, I’m pretty much done!

            I loved loved loved making the movie trailer. I used iMovie for the first time and it was relatively easy, plus it was so much fun using the puppets to make the trailer. It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like that, so it’s nice to get back into the drama/theatre side of things again, even if it is just for this brief project.

            My fiancé Jeff was a tremendous help in making the trailer, because initially I had been unsure of what to do for the setting. I considered going outside and shooting in a nearby park, but Jeff had the great idea of using our TV and setting up backgrounds on the TV. It worked a lot better than either of us expected, actually. For future videos, I am definitely making use of puppets and various backdrops again. Everyone loves puppets.

            The TED talk is going to be longer than the five minutes expected, and I still didn’t fit in barely anything I wanted to say, but no one really wants to listen to me talk for an hour, which I easily could! As much as I like the sound of my own voice, I’ll spare the general public from hearing too much of it and keep the speech short. 

Not just a Box

Pictured above: A crime against art

This is a picture I made of a rather distressed rabbit braving some white water rapids. I am unsure whether he is distressed because of the imminent dangers of the rapids or because he is realized he is completely see-through. Regardless, he is using the power of his imagination to transform what is a quite ordinary box into an extraordinary adventure. 

Creativity is an indispensable part of human nature. It helps us to both survive and thrive, solve problems seemingly impossible to solve, have fun, and feel fulfilled. As a future teacher, my creativity is going to be one of my greatest allies. The material I might have to teach students may remain the same year after year e.g. every student needs to know how to write a paragraph, but the way I go about modelling and teaching students about that concept should change depending on the student's strengths and learning needs. Creativity helps keep the classroom fun and memorable.

Apart from my own creativity, it is also the job of the teacher to cultivate student creativity. Teachers should be facilitators, creating an ideal environment for students to express themselves and grow. I want to encourage my students to feel like they can look at the world in different ways than their peers. One of the things I love the most about teaching is when a student presents an idea I've never thought of before. I can help keep students learning and growing, but students also help me to expand as a person as well.    

Don't Read This Post!

"Stop Sign." Retrieved from
http://goo.gl/KdV1Ol

Dear reader,

I’m putting this message here for your safety. What you were mistakenly about to read is so vile, so unpalatable, such a complete affront to human decency, that it will surely leave you sleepless for many nights, disturbed in mind and soul. If you read this, who knows what might happen to your psyche? So really, it’s in your best interest to stop right now before you become further corrupted.

See what I did there?

The minute someone tells you what to do, presumes to think they can tell you what knowledge is and isn’t appropriate for your mind you resist, if for no other reason but our natural morbid curiosity. If someone suggests that you won’t be able to handle something or that it is too racy, rather than deter you from reading it you think, well this should be good. It’s that thinking that gets educators and soon-to-be educators such as myself thinking they can exploit Banned Book Week for their own nefarious purposes. What purpose is that? Getting children to read. 

Heather Wolpert-Gawron wrote an interesting article on Edutopia about using Banned Books Week in schools to teach about censorship and to encourage reading. All this talk of banned and burning books set my mind alight with ideas on classroom possibilities. A surefire way to get an adolescent to do something is by telling them they can’t do it. Introducing a section in your classroom or school library of books that were considered dangerous or unsuitable for the minds of children should generate some interest. If your classroom has independent reading time, or students are expected to create a reading log for class, have students pick one of the banned books to read. You could even design a worksheet or report for them to do looking into the history of the book, and what themes or events in the book caused it to be contested. Here’s a list of challenged books for young adult readers and another of challenged picture books that you can set up in a corner of your class. 

Acknowledging Banned Books Week in your classroom is a great springboard into a host of conversations and activities you could have with the class regarding freedom of speech and its limits. This is a way to incorporate some Canadian law and politics into the classroom, as students can begin to think about what censorship laws we have in Canada, what speech is and isn’t protected e.g. hate speech, and can begin to consider their own views on freedom of speech and what restrictions are and aren’t okay. Depending on the grade (I would say grade 8 and up), you could have debates or discussions in the classroom about some of the more controversial censorship cases in Canada and when it may or may not be warranted or necessary to limit freedom of speech.

Banned Books Week can even be a way to get a little philosophical with the students as they can consider larger topics like the duties of the author or some of literature’s purposes. I don’t mean we need our students to put on togas and recreate a Greek symposium (although that could be fun if you wanted), merely that this can be a good entryway for getting students to think about why it’s important to study fiction, or even why it’s essential to have the arts in our schools. The authors of these banned books write about “tough stuff” in their books, sometimes having risked ridicule, scorn, and even jail time for their words. Ask your students: why would they do that? Why is it important for these stories to be heard? Is it important at all? Have them think about the medium. Why is it sometimes a good idea to talk about controversial issues, such as war, abuse, etc. through a narrative?

As you can see, Banned Books Week can be a fun and easy segway into conversations about deeper issues. If nothing else, making reading seem a little more exciting is always a good thing. I don’t know if there are many things more rewarding to a teacher of language and literacy than seeing a student that typically doesn’t read or like reading delve into a book and actually enjoy it! A word to the wise though: make sure the banned books you put in your classroom are reasonably age-appropriate. Maybe leave Tropic of Cancer for when the students are a little older than grade 5.

“You weren't there, you didn't see," he said. "There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing.”

            --Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

"Fahrenheit 451 Propaganda Poster." Retrieved
from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/436919601321018427/

8P29 Week 4 Post

Anonymous. "Billy Madison Math Class." Retrieved from
http://quotepix.com/That-Moment-When-You-Understand-Something-In-Math-Class-4603/order/top

I learned some valuable lessons on teaching this week, not just about teaching math but teaching in general. As part of a report for school, I was required to observe some subjects (preferably students) completing grade 6 EQAO questions, focusing in particular on their problem solving process. Now I don’t have easy access to a grade 6 subject pool, so I thought I would make do with my resources available. A friend’s 8-year-old daughter Amy (pseudonym) volunteered to help me out and try her hardest on the problems.

         
The first question she found approachable enough, she was required to draw a 3D shape from the net given, but during the second question we ran into some serious problems, and this was the error on my part. The second question is a multi-step word problem that during one step requires you to divide decimals. Amy, having just started grade 4 has neither encountered long division nor decimals, rendering the question impossible without the aid of a calculator (but even then if you don’t entirely understand the question, that can only take you so far). To make a long story short, she gave it the old college try but became upset and frustrated, leaving the room at one point with what I’m hoping wasn’t watery eyes. Luckily, the night wasn’t completely ruined because pizza arrived to save the day and we put problem solving to rest for the time being.

I learned a couple things from this experience. One, when I go into a classroom to teach, I need to make sure I am familiar with the curriculum, so I know activities that students can and can’t reasonably complete, otherwise there will be frustration all around. Some students have fragile egos and can become disheartened when they can’t complete a question, and take it personally, or even to extremes. They can get a question wrong and then out of their mouths come, “I suck at math!” Well no, I don’t think you can make that broad a claim. You just didn’t get this particular question right. Thus, making sure students have appropriate challenges is important for their self-esteem and overall learning. Especially with a subject like math, where students seem to quite easily get hang-ups, I don’t want to scare students away from trying new things and growing.

            
Two, I need to be more self-aware of my vocabulary when I speak. Amy was sometimes becoming confused with my explanations because I was using language she didn’t understand. I need to think about the language I’m using to ensure that I’m saying things in a way that a student of that age and maturity can understand. I also need to make sure I have a few ways to explain things, just in case one method doesn’t make sense to the student.

            
On the subject of alternative methods, we were learning about teaching strategies for fractions today in class, and a classmate shared a method I had never encountered before! For adding/subtracting fractions with unlike denominators, I always went to the tried and true Lowest Common Denominators, but the Macarena Method is fantastic! It’s fast, it’s easy, it makes you want to dance…there is nothing more you could want from a math strategy. I always liked fractions, apart from trigonometry and quadratics, I always liked fractions the best. I’m so pleased to find a way to make it more enjoyable (I hope the students like it too!!). It’s very encouraging being able to find so many resources online to help make math easier and more amusing. I like all the math parody songs you can find on YouTube as well, for example this place value song based off of “Rude” by Magic!:

The grade 4/5’s in my placement are on place value right now, so I may share this with them and see if they found it catchy like I did. I like that it goes through different types of notation as well, which is something the students have been getting mixed up. If you try it in a classroom, comment below and tell me how they liked it!