Final Synthesis Blog

Throughout the course of the semester, we have researched, learned, and practiced many different teaching strategies that will help diversify our teaching when we are in our own classrooms. Different teaching strategies help to switch up the way our classroom works. Many of these strategies are to help our students understand the information we give them easier and to allow them to work with us to learn in an easier and more efficient way. Not only have we learned about different ways to teaching students, but also different ways we can make learning easier for them. The extensive research and information we read about over this semester that explains how students learn and how many students are not comprehending the information they are learning because of some problem is astounding. In my blog post, “Help for Struggling Readers”, I read and discussed Chapter 11 of subjects matter, which looks into struggling readers and how we as teachers can get students more interested and help them be more successful in their reading motivation. Although that chapter included many different approaches to help struggling readers in the classroom, I found one approach to be more interesting to me than the others. The approach that I thought was interesting was proposed by Lisa MacArtney in her classroom. She had the students fill out a profile that helped her define the various types of intelligence found in her students. The four types were, “students who are strong on social relationships, those who are well organized, those who are analytical, and those with high energy,” (Daniels and Zemelman, p. 282). By filling these profiles out, MacArtney is able to analyze the different types of students in her class, and then group them based on their strengths. By doing this, she is automatically helping her students succeed in group work as well as boost their confidence in their own skill. 

Not only did this semester equip me with some necessary tools for teaching a middle school classroom, but it also pushed me to improve my skill of researching as well. Through resource blogs, I am now able to properly search for helpful math/teaching websites that I can use at will in my classroom. And through this research, I found some very helpful websites that can help me in my teaching as well as provide entertaining learning for my students. One article I came across in my search that I thought was interesting and helpful was titled, “We should Teach Math Like it’s a Language”. This article pushed my idea about math and the relationship it can have with a student. In the article, the author Jeannine Diddle Uzzi compares learning math to learning Latin. She talked about the idea that math builds on itself, and goes on to explain why this is one of the reasons why students have such a hard time with math. The negative stigma with math can also be traced back to our education system. One problem that fosters more negative ideas about math is that “instead of encouraging them to start anew in order to reinforce their skills, we test them, label that review ‘remedial,’ and withhold college credit from them,” (Uzzi, 2018). Uzzi goes on in the article about the importance of higher education math classes. This article was very helpful for me, though, because it pushed the limits of my idea on math and how it should be taught. 

Our job is a very tedious one. It requires many different elements of teaching that all take time and practice to use effectively. But without the right tools, you will not be able to get the job done. This class over the course of the semester has given me the proper tools to do my job as a teacher effectively as well as given me the opportunity to research tool myself that I can apply to my classroom. There are no two teachers with the exact same teaching strategies, and that is something I really look forward to as I become a teacher myself. The information I have received from researching and practicing will allow me to have my own twist on my classroom and help me to adjust to the different types of students that I will have over the course of (hopefully) many years. 

Word count: 717

Strategy Lesson Reflection

Our strategy lesson we taught for the class was the strategy “Tweet to Text”. The strategy includes giving the students some sort of topic or problem on a tweet-based document, and the students only have a certain amount of characters to give an explanation or answer. You could also have your students do a real life tweet on their phones if your classroom allows technological devices. I thought our lesson went pretty well. We gave our students order of operations equations and told them to solve them using order of operations. Some grows that we received were to be more organized and explain the assignment better. I think we could have done a better job with explaining the directions, however it was difficult for us to explain the task with four people teaching the lesson, and I also think it was difficult for the students since they were in groups of three or four. I think doing an assignment like this would be easier when you are the only teacher and you have created a level of respect with your students and they understand your way of explaining lessons. I thought this was an interesting strategy lesson and I would like to implement it into my own classroom one day, especially since students are becoming more and more technologically savvy through the generations. 

Word count: 224

Podcast - I am Malala

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eCkM4GiDdbwxUC_XnX0muRP6Dlk_zebT/view?usp=sharing

Carter Gibbons, Alena Locurcio, Katie Story , Calli-Ann Cardin, Heather Perry 

I am Malala

Corbett Math

Many middle school math websites today try and make everything about them look fancy and nice so that people will use their resources, even though sometimes those resources might not be the best thing for the students that are trying to learn. I decided to go with Corbett maths as my final resource, because it is a pretty basic website besides the fact that it has a variety of different abilities and opportunities for students to grow and learn better. Its wide variety of information is available for kindergartners, all the way up to seniors in high school. Another positive about Corbett maths is that it is free for everyone to use, teachers and students alike. This Corbett maths provides math videos, math practice questions, and worksheets with answers for students to practice on their own and for teachers to be able to use in class to better prepare their students. Another one of my favorite things about Corbett maths is that it has a drop down bar titled 5-a-day, which has 5 questions for students to practice with every single day of the month. Taking one look at the website, one might think that it might not be a very good source. But investigating a little deeper might reveal a hidden gem for teachers to give to their students. 

Word count: 222

https://corbettmathsprimary.com

Synthesis blog 5

The idea of using a book club in a math class seems extremely odd to me and also to other students if I had to guess. Although this seems like a very peculiar idea, incorporating book clubs into math curriculums can expand the students’ minds on how math works in the real world and how they can handle real life situations. Another fine example of why it is a good idea to incorporate book clubs into the math curriculum is that we can better show students how easy it is to organize cross content subjects with math, just like how easy it is to do that for English language arts classes. Incorporating a book club into a math class could also be a great way to get students that may not enjoy math as much more involved in the math setting, giving they are probably more comfortable reading than solving problems. Diversifying your classroom is a great way to keep your students interested and engaged. Although, it might be difficult to introduce something very alien into the classroom, so it is our job as teachers to make sure we provide well explained instructions to the students. Book clubs are a great way to incorporate different ideas into the math class and engage students who may not be interested in math. 

Word count: 220 

Math TV

For my resource blog for October 6th, I came across a website called mathtv.com. This website was described as the “Netflix of online learning”. Math TV is home to 10 thousand free math videos covering topics such as algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. However, their “Basic Math” topic will be most relevant for middle school students. They have 34 amazing math tutors that make their videos. The reason the website uses so many tutors is because they use all of the varied approaches to the same math topics and problems help students see how to solve problems differently. The website can also be used on all mobile devices so students can watch them on the go or teachers can incorporate them into daily mathematics instruction. I think it is self-descriptive as to why this resource can be so valuable. One of the many things that I enjoyed about this website is their variety of videos and tutors. I think a lot of the times we get caught up teaching one way to do things (often our own way) and we do not allow our students to think of different ways to solve a problem, even though it might be easier for them that way. Overall, I think this website will provide a useful tool for teachers that allows them to show different ideas on different problem-solving techniques. 

https://mathtv.com

Word count: 235

Historical Fiction in English and Social Studies Classrooms: Is It a Natural Marriage?

In the article titled “Historical Fiction in English and Social Studies Classrooms: Is It a Natural Marriage?”, we see a study group of ELA and Social Studies teachers that share the lessons they learned from reading historical fiction and nonfiction together. Through this, they are able to explore different approaches for a text from both disciplines, and how seeing through the different approaches can more fully contextualize the work, as well as cultivate historical empathy. For me, this was a difficult read. I had a hard time focusing in on the information the author was giving us and picking out certain topics that seemed important. I did pick up on a few things, such as contextualizing. Contextualizing is described by the author as, “the act of placing an event in its proper context—within the web of personalities, circumstances,” (Hinton, Suh, Colòn-Brown, O’Hearn, 23). When I was in high school, one of my social studies teachers gave us a historical novel. She told us the object of the novel was for us was to gain a better sense of knowing and understanding of the context of the time period discussed in the novel and the chronology of that context. This allowed us as students to gain a true understanding of the characters, time period, and events that happened in the novel. 

 Word count: 222