Final Synthesis Blog

I didn't really understand how this class was going to benefit me as a future math teacher prior to starting this course. Growing up, I wasn’t very fond of reading many books unless I stumbled upon something that interested me. I found myself reading only when it was necessary for classes. I’ve always had a hard time with reading comprehension because I would have to read something repeatedly in order to grasp what I read. This class has shown me that implementing literacy into the classroom is beneficial for students. I’ve also come to the realization that I’ve never had an issue with reading and interpreting math equations and word problems. Reading in math is much different than reading in other subjects, but a lot of the same strategies used to interpret the various math problems can be used in the other content areas as well.

              Two of the most influential things that I enjoyed in this course was book clubs and podcasts. At first, I wasn’t thrilled to read or even find a book to present, but it was exciting to watch my peers do their pitches and it made it hard to choose just one book to read. The City of Ember was such a good book and I am going to purchase the whole series because I was so intrigued. I enjoyed discussing the book with my book club and it was good to see they were just as captivated into it as I was. The podcast was also a good experience. My group and I enjoyed creating the podcast starting with the intro and outro music and discussing the science and social studies content that was demonstrated throughout the book. I didn’t really know what a podcast was before this assignment and never listened to any before. Since this assignment, I’ve subscribed to a few different podcast channels and I listen to them frequently.

I’ve learned a lot of different strategy lessons from Subject Matters that I would love to implement in my classroom. I will definitely use think-a-louds to help my students visually see how I would approach a problem and thinking strategies that can come into play to make tackling math problems a lot easier.  I can recall some of my math teachers demonstrating think-a-louds on the projector and I can honestly say it was very helpful. I can also remember doing entrance and exit slips in school. I now understand the purpose of them and will also use those in my classroom. I also enjoyed both of the strategy lessons that I presented in the class. The vocabulary predictions lesson was fun and engaging. I could see myself giving students key words to categorize them and to see if they determine what they believe the chosen article is about. The dramatic role play was fun to watch the groups act out as a weather team. Everyone worked as a team and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I haven’t quite figured out exactly how I would utilize the dramatic role play strategy yet, but if I do, I will use this in my class. Overall, this class has changed my perspective of bringing literacy in my math class and providing my students with the necessary tools to be successful in reading.

Autumn

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Art & Content Area Literacy

The trip to the Georgia Museum of Art was intriguing. The work of art I chose is “Composition” by Albert Eugene Gallatin in 1936. Gallatin was an American modernist painter and collector who founded the Museum of Living Art in New York City in 1927. He exhibited various works of art by European and American modern artists including Pablo Picasso. I chose this piece because I like the appeal of abstract art and with my primary concentration being math, I thought this work of art could be incorporated in a math class. When I found this oil painting, the shapes immediately caught my attention. There are a few different shapes represented on this canvas. As an activity, I would do front loading images with different works of art including this one and have students write down what shapes they see for each image. I would then have them turn and talk to their neighbor to discuss the shapes they noticed in the different art pieces and see if they noticed shapes that their neighbor didn’t have listed. Another activity or project that can be developed could be having the students figure out the angles of the shapes presented using necessary tools like a protractor. I think this is a good way to incorporate art into the math classroom and appeal to students who have an interest.

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Book Clubs

I’ve actually been enjoying the book I’m reading for Book Clubs. I am reading The City of Ember and it is intriguing. If I feel this way about the book, I would hope my students would be just as excited to and get into the book. It is a book that covers some content area topics like greenhouses, electricity, and utilizing resources to name a few, but it’s not a book I would only pull out excerpts. Although it has some science topics, they are spread throughout the book and I don’t think it would be as effective. As I read, I found various things in the book that I thought could be brought up in the classroom and discussed. I even seen things that students could make inferences about. I would definitely recommend this book and I will definitely read the other books in the series. This has opened my eyes to the idea of wanting to do book clubs in my classroom. I think it would depend on the book and if the concepts are clearly discussed in short sections on whether I would pull out excerpts. I like the idea of reading in content areas other than language arts because it promotes literacy and students don’t associate reading novels only with language arts. I think with having each group have their set of rules, it holds the students accountable for reading outside of class and being able to discuss in their groups what has been happening in their books.

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Resource Blog #5: Generation Genius

www.generationgenius.com

I found this cool website for science content. It puts me in a mindset of Bill Nye with the fun entertaining videos, but it’s more current. Bill Nye started back about 25 years ago so a lot of the videos are old. A major difference I see between Generation Genius and Bill Nye is that these videos have 2 students about high school age who look more relatable with a younger scientist who loves to dance. It also aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards which is also a plus. I was able to watch a sample video towards the bottom on physical and chemical change. Within the video, they did cool experiments that corresponded with the lesson. They also provide discussion questions, interactive activities, a lesson plan, a teacher guide, and even a quiz for the various lessons. It’s a website that, like BrainPop there is a paid subscription, but I think this would be worth subscribing to for science.

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Strategy Lesson Reflection: Dramatic Roleplay

I think the dramatic role-play strategy went a lot better than I expected. Jessica wanted to take the lead on this project and she did absolutely amazing especially with all the props she provided for this activity. I was a little skeptical about this strategy because I know what kind of person I was in school and I still am not very fond of being in front of class for things such as skits. I really enjoyed every group’s skits and how everyone participated and had fun. Everyone added comedy to their skit which made it really fun. I can see how it can get out of control in a middle grades classroom so there would definitely need to be some ground rules but also an understanding that it will be somewhat chaotic in general. I like how it gives students a chance to be creative and can slightly think outside the box. This is a good “before the reading” strategy to activate visualizing when reading. Once students begin to read they are easily able to visualize parts of the skits and how they connect to the readings. It also makes the reading more feasible to read and understand. After seeing this strategy in full effect in class today, I could see myself utilizing this strategy in my classroom. It allows students to engage with their peers and having various roles allows students to choose what they feel comfortable with while also participating.

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Content Differentiation

I believe differentiation in the classroom is vital and all teachers should implement teaching in various ways because we all learn in different ways and aren’t all on the same level. I think the observer did a great job with giving constructive criticism. She was able to give the teacher pointers on how to improve with letting the students be more interactive with the smart board and asking more application type questions. This made me think about the test questions we had to write up for our science methods class. We had to create test questions for a unit and needed to included knowledge, comprehension, and application-based questions. It can be difficult to think about questions that are application-based, but it allows students to think deeper and gives teachers an understanding of whether or not the students are able to apply what they have learned to answer questions of things they haven’t necessarily learned or experienced. Something so simple as including pictures with the vocabulary words was a good tip given to the teacher as well. It helps students who may not understand what the word means, and it also helps students like me to visualize or have a picture to associate with each of the vocabulary words. The puzzle activity was a great way for the students to work together as a group. I was glad to see that the students in each group weren’t grouped together based on their cognitive levels and yet they were given questions that were on their level. I could see myself doing something like this that targets the various cognitive levels of my students so that I am meeting the needs of all of my students.  

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Resource Blog #4: Math Scavenger Hunt

https://www.scaffoldedmath.com/2018/02/percents-scavenger-hunt.html

I’ve always found scavenger hunts to be fun because I like a challenge, so I found this math scavenger hunt that would be fun to incorporate in a classroom. Students are able to work in pairs or alone at the teacher’s discretion and can start at any card around the room. Students must read the problem and solve it. After they have solved the problem, they have to find the next card with that solution on the top. I would definitely use this in my class as a fun activity for students to go around the room, but they are also practicing word problems, so they will need to know how to read and understand them and be able to solve it in order to move on to the next card. Teachers could also use standardized test questions in their scavenger hunt to familiarize their students with those types of questions.

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