“It’s important to recognize that we may learn a definition for a word and still not really understand it in terms of being to use it appropriately”. ( p.135). I found this quote to really hit home when referring to the book, and all the techniques that its teaching us in order for students to fully comprehend the word not just know the definition. In the last few chapters, I found fascinating was how the teacher had students write a paragraph, song or a poems using math vocabulary words. I especially like the poem to the Easter Bunny. Personally, I thought it was very creative and humorous. It shows how creative a student could be. As, I teacher I believe that we should think out the box when educating our students I just question time. Does a math teacher have enough time to teach this way? Even though this is not my forte, I would love to observe a teacher educating students in math in such matter.
Zailyn... I agree with you 100%. There has been a trend with our conversations about the issue of time. Her ideas are incredibly creative and in practice I would like to see some of them used.
This section of the book pertained to self-assessment and special vocabulary assignments and how it helps develop understanding and build vocabulary. In the beginning of the reading, Murray states that she has students write daily journal entries (which she also mentions in the previous section of the book), biweekly self-evaluations, and trimester self-evaluations. Like last discussion, the first thing that came to my mind was “when are the students learning math,” and “how long are they given to write these reflections and when are they being done?” For the biweekly self-evaluations, it is the first time Murray gives a time frame for any assignment. It is handed out on Friday and due Monday. The purpose with this assignment is no surprise that it is to use and build math vocabulary. I’m glad Murray added a picture of the assignment because they way it was described I thought the student had a lot more leeway in completing it; however, it is more structured and directed. Students review their work, evaluate their level of understanding and show their understanding with an example, check homework and vocabulary, summarize new understanding and ask questions, and reflect on key elements on effort and behavior. The trimester self-evaluations are more detailed and the structure changes every trimester depending on what material is taught. I was so glad to hear this because evaluations (even assignments) need to be changed depending on the material taught. There is a unit perspective and a vocabulary perspective. Murray states, “Students are to select words that are not mentioned in other parts of the self-evaluation, explain them, and reinforce their explanations with examples and illustrations,” (136). I loved seeing multiple examples of the vocabulary portion because each student interpreted the directions in a different way and their response is acceptable. In the “special vocabulary assignment,” students create a vocabulary list of all the words they encountered so far during the trimester. Then Murray selects 20-25 of them and has the students use them to write a paragraph, poem, letter, etc. to convince the reader they understand the meaning of the words. This is a great idea because it incorporates higher order of thinking and allows for choice and creativity. This can be related to our assignments—our case study and reading and writing strategies. For our case study, it was very open and we had the choice to focus on a student or the classroom. For the reading and writing strategy, we could pick from numerous strategies and make our lesson plan. I was beyond impressed reading Anne’s poem because I know I was not that creative in Middle School. There was one sentence where I screamed “OH MY GOD,” and it was “one of the huge issues I had to consider on my return to the classroom was keeping balance—balance between time focused on vocabulary activities per se and time focused on mathematical content and procedures,” (148). I was so excited; I did not know what to do with myself. The theme of this section of the book was being self aware and I am so happy she admitted that she had this struggle because I know we noticed this issue from day one of our reading. Her ideas are excellent but I would still like to see her lessons in practice.
Zailyn, I agree that it is very important to teach students to fully comprehend the word and not just so they can rewrite a memorized definition with no meaning to them on a vocabulary quiz. However, that is very hard to do but these chapters offer some good techniques including the self assessments and writing short stories and poems. What is great about activities like these that are more outside the box is that they give students a choice and allow them to be creative. Those are two important factors in engaging students. Ariel, I am also excited that she finally mentions time, which we have been concerned about throughout the entire book. Although she admits that she struggles with the issue of time, she still manages to run her class like this and I as well would like to see it in action. Self assessment is beneficial to both the students and the teacher. “It is a form of focused reflection that gives students the power to understand how they think, how they communicate, how they process information, and in essence how they learn” (132). Students have to look back at their notes from the last couple of weeks and review what they had learned. This is a way to “reinforce the value of keeping record.” Taking notes is very important! Students will show their evidence of understanding and this is where the student themselves can realize that they don’t truly understand or the teacher can notice that the students may be able to do the work, but does not have a grasp on the real meaning. Overall, self assessments are another way to tie in vocabulary to math. Students must give examples and illustrations to large concepts and mathematical ideas so there is not much room for students to cover up their confusions. There is very little room for students to pretend they understand when they really don’t, and these evaluations are a good way for the students to notice that themselves and see for themselves where they are struggling. I also like how there are biweekly and trimester assessments. That way if a student is falling behind in understanding, it will be discovered before it goes on for too long.
When I first read about the evaluations, I was not sure if I was a fond of incorporating this idea into my classroom. However, I was able to see a value in this strategy. The aspect that I liked most with the evaluations was the way Murray had her students refer back to their notes. In most cases, I have never seen students recently take notes in a math classroom and when they did they did not know how to take them, study them and/or refer back to them. Having them evaluate themselves “forced” them to go back and see what they understand or what they need to improve on. Also it gave students the feeling of equality and honesty in the classroom. What I mean by this is that the students have a chance to grade their own work instead of constantly receiving grades or feedback from the teacher. These examples illustrated the honesty students had towards grading themselves. They were able to point out their strengths and weaknesses and build upon that. What I also liked about the evaluations was how Murray already structured it. Instead of having them write what they think they did well and not so well on she wrote detailed questions for student to look back at their notes and search for what she is asking. The only criticism I had about her structured evaluations was that some of her questions were closed ended. Instead of asking the students “are your notes neat and legible”, she could have added a simple “why” to have the students expand on their answer. Writing in mathematics is an essential way for students to learn mathematics. Not only did I learn this through our group’s strategy demo, but also with Murray’s examples of poems and short stories. This allowed students to express math in their choice of writing and be creative! I enjoyed reading all of the poems and loved how Murray included a piece of math writing that did not work out for a student. While reading this book I was getting concerned that everything was too perfect and that all of these strategies work for all students. However, in this case writing math was a difficult concept to grasp for one student but that’s why practice makes perfect.
Jacki, I probably should have read your comment before I wrote mine because I completely agree with students looking back at their notes to assess wheater they understand a concept (also stated in my comment).
Girls- After reading everyone post, I have to say that I agree. I was thinking back on what Ariel had asked me in class. How do you use technology and can technology help teacher with time. Since, we have mention in most of our meeting that time is critical. There are many creative ways of using technology but everything depends on how it’s being used. Major issue in most schools are that teacher just don’t know how to utilize it. One problem that I find is training. Teacher aren’t being trained enough to use different computer application. Personally, I think that creating a web quest activity online is fun and keeps student engaged. A webquest is simply and lesson plan that consist of a step by step process on how to complete an assignment. Here is more information that you could read about webquest: http://www.teachersfirst.com/summer/webquest/quest-b.shtml. I am actually working on one myself, once I finish I’ll posted it up in meeting #5 for you to see.
What we discussed in our book club meeting 4/22: Ariel brought up the issue of time once again because for the first time in the book, Murray mentions her struggle with time. Ariel then asked whether technology can be added to a vocabulary intensive class. Zailyn made a very good point that technology can make a big difference if it is used correctly. Zailyn adds to thing in the previous post that technology can help with the issue of time in the classroom; however the biggest problem is that teachers don’t know how to utilize technology. There are so many possibilities, but due to the lack of teacher training in technology, they are not being used. We all agreed that it would be beneficial if technology was used properly and both the students and teacher will benefit. We discussed having a wiki or a blog, that way students can respond to one another and post questions they might have. With technology, students would become more engaged.
Zailyn, the webquests you mentioned sounds interested and I would love to see the one you created!
There's a nice dialogue going on here that I appreciate. Thanks, Jacki, for the summary of the discussion as I just caught a bit of it. I also appreciated reading her struggle with time. Remember that a book is going to feature "best practices" and I'm fairly sure that she has developed these practices over many years of teaching and I'm not so sure that she uses all of these practices all of the time in each year that she teaches. She's showing her best work and the point is to build your repertoire of ways to build math literacy. I like the conversation re: technology and how it might relieve some of the pressures of time. Was there anything in this chapter that made you think that the use of technology could relieve some of the time pressure you might feel if implementing such a strategy? Interesting thoughts posted here.
There are many ways in how you could intergrate technology into the classroom. For instance, using a smartboard, you could make you lesson very creative and more interactive for students. Its hard to explain but you could just make your lesson very interactive blocking words, pull up a tag of answers, enbedding videos and add vocies make things more adminated. Another ways fo using teachnolgy would be podcasting, bloging and wiki. Recently, i learn about this site called secondlife.com, teacher are using this site to teach their students, it's something very similar to sims. Try is out.
11 comments:
“It’s important to recognize that we may learn a definition for a word and still not really understand it in terms of being to use it appropriately”. ( p.135). I found this quote to really hit home when referring to the book, and all the techniques that its teaching us in order for students to fully comprehend the word not just know the definition. In the last few chapters, I found fascinating was how the teacher had students write a paragraph, song or a poems using math vocabulary words. I especially like the poem to the Easter Bunny. Personally, I thought it was very creative and humorous. It shows how creative a student could be. As, I teacher I believe that we should think out the box when educating our students I just question time. Does a math teacher have enough time to teach this way? Even though this is not my forte, I would love to observe a teacher educating students in math in such matter.
Zailyn...
I agree with you 100%. There has been a trend with our conversations about the issue of time. Her ideas are incredibly creative and in practice I would like to see some of them used.
This section of the book pertained to self-assessment and special vocabulary assignments and how it helps develop understanding and build vocabulary. In the beginning of the reading, Murray states that she has students write daily journal entries (which she also mentions in the previous section of the book), biweekly self-evaluations, and trimester self-evaluations. Like last discussion, the first thing that came to my mind was “when are the students learning math,” and “how long are they given to write these reflections and when are they being done?” For the biweekly self-evaluations, it is the first time Murray gives a time frame for any assignment. It is handed out on Friday and due Monday. The purpose with this assignment is no surprise that it is to use and build math vocabulary. I’m glad Murray added a picture of the assignment because they way it was described I thought the student had a lot more leeway in completing it; however, it is more structured and directed. Students review their work, evaluate their level of understanding and show their understanding with an example, check homework and vocabulary, summarize new understanding and ask questions, and reflect on key elements on effort and behavior. The trimester self-evaluations are more detailed and the structure changes every trimester depending on what material is taught. I was so glad to hear this because evaluations (even assignments) need to be changed depending on the material taught. There is a unit perspective and a vocabulary perspective. Murray states, “Students are to select words that are not mentioned in other parts of the self-evaluation, explain them, and reinforce their explanations with examples and illustrations,” (136). I loved seeing multiple examples of the vocabulary portion because each student interpreted the directions in a different way and their response is acceptable. In the “special vocabulary assignment,” students create a vocabulary list of all the words they encountered so far during the trimester. Then Murray selects 20-25 of them and has the students use them to write a paragraph, poem, letter, etc. to convince the reader they understand the meaning of the words. This is a great idea because it incorporates higher order of thinking and allows for choice and creativity. This can be related to our assignments—our case study and reading and writing strategies. For our case study, it was very open and we had the choice to focus on a student or the classroom. For the reading and writing strategy, we could pick from numerous strategies and make our lesson plan. I was beyond impressed reading Anne’s poem because I know I was not that creative in Middle School.
There was one sentence where I screamed “OH MY GOD,” and it was “one of the huge issues I had to consider on my return to the classroom was keeping balance—balance between time focused on vocabulary activities per se and time focused on mathematical content and procedures,” (148). I was so excited; I did not know what to do with myself. The theme of this section of the book was being self aware and I am so happy she admitted that she had this struggle because I know we noticed this issue from day one of our reading. Her ideas are excellent but I would still like to see her lessons in practice.
I apologize for writing a mini novel...
Zailyn, I agree that it is very important to teach students to fully comprehend the word and not just so they can rewrite a memorized definition with no meaning to them on a vocabulary quiz. However, that is very hard to do but these chapters offer some good techniques including the self assessments and writing short stories and poems. What is great about activities like these that are more outside the box is that they give students a choice and allow them to be creative. Those are two important factors in engaging students.
Ariel, I am also excited that she finally mentions time, which we have been concerned about throughout the entire book. Although she admits that she struggles with the issue of time, she still manages to run her class like this and I as well would like to see it in action.
Self assessment is beneficial to both the students and the teacher. “It is a form of focused reflection that gives students the power to understand how they think, how they communicate, how they process information, and in essence how they learn” (132). Students have to look back at their notes from the last couple of weeks and review what they had learned. This is a way to “reinforce the value of keeping record.” Taking notes is very important! Students will show their evidence of understanding and this is where the student themselves can realize that they don’t truly understand or the teacher can notice that the students may be able to do the work, but does not have a grasp on the real meaning. Overall, self assessments are another way to tie in vocabulary to math. Students must give examples and illustrations to large concepts and mathematical ideas so there is not much room for students to cover up their confusions. There is very little room for students to pretend they understand when they really don’t, and these evaluations are a good way for the students to notice that themselves and see for themselves where they are struggling. I also like how there are biweekly and trimester assessments. That way if a student is falling behind in understanding, it will be discovered before it goes on for too long.
When I first read about the evaluations, I was not sure if I was a fond of incorporating this idea into my classroom. However, I was able to see a value in this strategy. The aspect that I liked most with the evaluations was the way Murray had her students refer back to their notes. In most cases, I have never seen students recently take notes in a math classroom and when they did they did not know how to take them, study them and/or refer back to them. Having them evaluate themselves “forced” them to go back and see what they understand or what they need to improve on. Also it gave students the feeling of equality and honesty in the classroom. What I mean by this is that the students have a chance to grade their own work instead of constantly receiving grades or feedback from the teacher. These examples illustrated the honesty students had towards grading themselves. They were able to point out their strengths and weaknesses and build upon that. What I also liked about the evaluations was how Murray already structured it. Instead of having them write what they think they did well and not so well on she wrote detailed questions for student to look back at their notes and search for what she is asking. The only criticism I had about her structured evaluations was that some of her questions were closed ended. Instead of asking the students “are your notes neat and legible”, she could have added a simple “why” to have the students expand on their answer.
Writing in mathematics is an essential way for students to learn mathematics. Not only did I learn this through our group’s strategy demo, but also with Murray’s examples of poems and short stories. This allowed students to express math in their choice of writing and be creative! I enjoyed reading all of the poems and loved how Murray included a piece of math writing that did not work out for a student. While reading this book I was getting concerned that everything was too perfect and that all of these strategies work for all students. However, in this case writing math was a difficult concept to grasp for one student but that’s why practice makes perfect.
Jacki,
I probably should have read your comment before I wrote mine because I completely agree with students looking back at their notes to assess wheater they understand a concept (also stated in my comment).
Girls-
After reading everyone post, I have to say that I agree. I was thinking back on what Ariel had asked me in class. How do you use technology and can technology help teacher with time. Since, we have mention in most of our meeting that time is critical. There are many creative ways of using technology but everything depends on how it’s being used. Major issue in most schools are that teacher just don’t know how to utilize it. One problem that I find is training. Teacher aren’t being trained enough to use different computer application. Personally, I think that creating a web quest activity online is fun and keeps student engaged. A webquest is simply and lesson plan that consist of a step by step process on how to complete an assignment. Here is more information that you could read about webquest:
http://www.teachersfirst.com/summer/webquest/quest-b.shtml.
I am actually working on one myself, once I finish I’ll posted it up in meeting #5 for you to see.
What we discussed in our book club meeting 4/22:
Ariel brought up the issue of time once again because for the first time in the book, Murray mentions her struggle with time. Ariel then asked whether technology can be added to a vocabulary intensive class. Zailyn made a very good point that technology can make a big difference if it is used correctly. Zailyn adds to thing in the previous post that technology can help with the issue of time in the classroom; however the biggest problem is that teachers don’t know how to utilize technology. There are so many possibilities, but due to the lack of teacher training in technology, they are not being used. We all agreed that it would be beneficial if technology was used properly and both the students and teacher will benefit. We discussed having a wiki or a blog, that way students can respond to one another and post questions they might have. With technology, students would become more engaged.
Zailyn, the webquests you mentioned sounds interested and I would love to see the one you created!
There's a nice dialogue going on here that I appreciate. Thanks, Jacki, for the summary of the discussion as I just caught a bit of it. I also appreciated reading her struggle with time. Remember that a book is going to feature "best practices" and I'm fairly sure that she has developed these practices over many years of teaching and I'm not so sure that she uses all of these practices all of the time in each year that she teaches. She's showing her best work and the point is to build your repertoire of ways to build math literacy. I like the conversation re: technology and how it might relieve some of the pressures of time. Was there anything in this chapter that made you think that the use of technology could relieve some of the time pressure you might feel if implementing such a strategy? Interesting thoughts posted here.
Christine-
There are many ways in how you could intergrate technology into the classroom. For instance, using a smartboard, you could make you lesson very creative and more interactive for students. Its hard to explain but you could just make your lesson very interactive blocking words, pull up a tag of answers, enbedding videos and add vocies make things more adminated. Another ways fo using teachnolgy would be podcasting, bloging and wiki. Recently, i learn about this site called secondlife.com, teacher are using this site to teach their students, it's something very similar to sims. Try is out.
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