Final Blog Post

As a future math teacher, literacy is not often something that I think about or something that I have even thought about educating myself on. Even though you may do it subconsciously, we use literacy strategies every single day in our lives. Whether we are reading facebook posts, or solving math word problems, we are using reading and literacy strategies and applying them to the content that we need.

Before taking this LLED course, I never took the time to see the importance of different reading strategies that can be used in the classroom. One of the tasks that we did was taking a reading strategy and applying it to our content area. So, not only are we teaching our students math, but we are also teaching them a reading strategy that can also be applied in their other subjects.

Tweet to text strategy

The reading strategy that we chose to implement for our lesson plan was a tweet to text strategy. As the teacher, I typed up a document about PEMDAS (Order of Operations). After passing out the reading to the students, we then provided the students with a paper that looked like the image above with a math problem at the top. In only 140 characters (similar to a tweet) they had to describe the important steps in their order of operations that they took to solve the problem. I loved this activity because it brought literacy into the math classroom, while also giving them a reading strategy. Sometimes reading long passages and textbooks can be very overwhelming. If we teach students to limit their summaries of the reading, then they will become accustomed to picking out the most important parts and remembering those for the future. 

This task was a great way to get us to introduce a reading/literacy strategy into our classroom, while also incorporating twitter, which may commonly be used among the age of students that we will be teaching. Doing small activities like this with our students can go a very long way with them and create a better understanding for topics rather than just having them read paragraph after paragraph about a certain subject. 

The book club activity that we completed with our classmates also helped me develop reading strategies and literary strategies in a content area that was not my own. For the book club, I chose to do a cross-curricular book and read a book that best applies to social studies. For the book club we were each assigned a task when reading the book and took on that role when reading through the book. We made notes on post-it notes and came back to share our findings with our group. This was a great reading strategy in my opinion because you are not trying to focus on too many things at once. For example, I was the connector, while reading Troubled River I was constantly making connections to prior knowledge and sharing these with my group whenever we met. My classmate was the questioner, so the whole time she was reading, she was thinking of questions that would be good to have a discussion about. I really think that book clubs can be very effective in the classroom. They teach very good reading and literacy strategies and can be effective in a very cross-curricular way. 

Well yes, math is very cool. This course has taught me how to dig deeper into math and recognize the literary component of it that does often go unnoticed. I have learned many strategies that I can apply to my lessons and help my students in improving their literacy. Coming into this class I definitely did not think that it was a math teacher's place to be teaching anything about literacy. But, after completing some activities, my opinion has definitely changed and I cannot wait to implement these with my kids. 

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Podcast!

https://soundcloud.com/mikesilver87/lled-podcast

Lesson Plan Blog

Our lesson plan was based off of the strategy "Text to tweet." To begin the activity, I typed up a reading about Order of Operations. Within the reading I provided examples of what to do and what not to do with clear examples. After giving everyone time to read the reading, we provided them with a problem for their group. We asked them to then solve the problem and sum up their method into 140 characters on the paper we gave them that looked like a new tweet.

A grow that I saw a few times for this activity was more organization at the beginning and giving a better explanation. I think that this was a very good point because I feel as though I was not totally prepared to explain the directions and explain how to properly complete the task. If I got to do this activity again, I would have something for me to read off of so I do not get nervous and miss a step or not explain something well enough.

Overall, I think that our lesson plan went well and it was enjoyable. If we were to do this with our students, I would have each group come up and explain their thinking and explain the steps that they used and how it related to the reading that they did at the beginning of class.

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Resource Blog #5

Click Here to see my Resource!

While this resource is more guided towards younger grades, K-5, it can be a great resource for 4th and 5th grade teachers. The link that I have provided is to the 5th grade math page. This website provides great games online, as well as worksheets that can be printed out and given to the class. In my opinion, I think that games can sometimes be more effective than worksheets for homework. While it is important for the teacher to have a physical copy of their understanding of the concepts, it is a lot more thrilling for them to go home and play a game and may not even feel like work.

This website provides great games for so many different topics. One way that I would love to use things like this in my classroom is maybe having them take a pre-quiz in class, going home to play the game and coming back the next day to take another quiz. I want to try out this method and see if the game playing is actually effective to their learning and can help teach concepts in a different way that they may better understand. For students that are more visual learners, this will definitely benefit them and encourage them to do more math than they would normally have.

I know that doing homework can be a real downer and can often get boring. For students that are still in elementary school, it might be hard for them to go sit and focus for that long doing homework for multiple classes. This might be a nice activity for them to do once a week or so to get a distraction and break from worksheet after worksheet. It is more hands on and gives them something to look forward to and be excited about.

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Synthesis Blog #5 (Chapter 9)

Book clubs can be a great addition to any lesson, or subject. While reading may seem like an easy task, it is difficult to some kids and definitely helps for them to discuss what they have read and gauge their level of understanding of the text. When being put into book clubs, it can help the students collaborate and better understand scenes and explanations that they may not have understood during their first time reading it. Having them pull out hard vocabulary words, and paragraphs that were hard to grasp, they can discuss these with a group and get other people's perspective on how they interpreted it.

However, "we cannot plunge kids into book clubs without their knowing how they are to operate" (SM page 244). This is crucial for students to understand the task at hand and understand what they are going to be getting out of each activity. As a junior in college, I still did not understand the purpose for a book club until it was explained to me. If students are aware that they need to come prepared, be respectful and use this book club to its fullest potential, then I can see a great benefit to them.



The only setback is students getting off-task, or students sometimes not completing their reading. If there are some over-achievers and some under-achievers in a group, then it can be hard for them to find balance and may often be frustrating. If each student has not done the reading and have things to talk about, then a book club may not be a very effective group-work activity. And that is why it is important to set guidelines and expectations before-hand so students can participate to the fullest extent.

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Book for book club!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061229571/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0061229571&linkCode=as2&tag=cortlandcolem-20

Resource Blog #4

This is a website that I used to use when I was younger. Not only does this website have games, but it also has lessons about many different levels of math. One of my favorite things about this website are the printable flashcards. Growing up I have always used a lot of flashcards in all of my classes to memorize and better understand information. These flashcards can be used for memorizing basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems. If the students have these handy and in their binder, they can refer to the basic problems as they move onto harder equations.

While it is only aimed for Kindergarten- Sixth graders, I still think that this is a great resource. It can inspire teachers to use games in class and maybe assign games for homework rather than a worksheet. It is important for students to know that math is not solely crunching numbers and coming out with an answer. If they are given something interactive either in class or for homework, they are going to become more familiar with the content and more comfortable with the math as they see it somewhere else than a white sheet of paper.

Simply adding colors and games to class can encourage engagement. While this website cannot really be cross-curricular, I think that it can inspire teachers to use games and websites that are similar in their classroom. Lecturing with students this age can get really boring and it is easy to lose their attention. Keeping students participating will encourage questions and begin to limit confusion, which will expand knowledge.

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