Today we finally had the opportunity to talk about the reading on math and literature. I was really impressed by the stories that middle school students were able to write. As I started to read the article I couldn’t imagine how creative math stories could be because I was not able to think of anything. After reading through the examples I was really surprised. This article was really a success story of an integrated lesson plan. The article mentioned that this project helped show the teacher where the students were still unclear about geometry. Through the students writing they were able to figure out where there was a mixed up understanding of angle measurement and other geometry principles. The project also allows for the students that don’t feel like they can show their creative side in math to branch out and do just that. I am curious what other math and literature lesson plans there are out there. This article inspired my partner and I to create a lesson plan integrating math and writing. Our lessons is still basically in the brainstorming phase but we are going somewhere along the lines of a persuasive writing piece to go along with a set of data. The data given will be a fictitious classes grades and the students will have to say whether or not they want their grade to fall in the mean, median, or mode if they they are striving for the best possible grade.
During our discussion about the article one of my classmates said “what if a student is not a good writer?” This was something I was thinking about. However right as she asked the question I realized “how does that logic compare to the student who is not good at math?” and that was exactly the response to the question. It is an interesting thought. As teachers can we really worry about what we are going to ask students to do because they might not be good at it? Of course so long as we are asking them to do things that is within their expected abilities, or maybe push them a little. I can see how a math teacher might not want to bring in writing because it gives that student a chance who doesn’t like writing to have a class where they don’t have to worry about it. Or an English teacher not bringing in art because this is a chance for the students to just read and write. However, if all teachers were exposing their students to a range of integrated curriculum maybe the students would do better in them all and understand that they have a connection.
In class today we had two great activities. First we got to make measuring fun, by jumping cotton ball frogs with a paper clip. After each “frog” jump we had to measure the distance and write it down so that in the end we had to calculate the average jump of the frogs in my group. I know I learned about measurement in school at some point, although I don’t recall having the chance to be one the ground gathering the measurements. After that we moved on to creating giraffes out of Tangrams. That was quite hard for me at first. Even though I have done this activity before, and probably have even made a giraffe, I had a hard time. Once I thought I saw how all of the shapes went together to form the giraffe I had a hard time seeing it in any other configuration. Once several students had successfully built the giraffe we were asked to use several sets of Tangrams to double its size. That part came easier to me. Once I was able to look at the small giraffe I was able to figure out what was needed to double its size. To challenge myself more I found an iPod app where I can continue to create these figures. So far I have successfully created 3 of the easiest. Only about 25 more to go.
During our discussion about the article one of my classmates said “what if a student is not a good writer?” This was something I was thinking about. However right as she asked the question I realized “how does that logic compare to the student who is not good at math?” and that was exactly the response to the question. It is an interesting thought. As teachers can we really worry about what we are going to ask students to do because they might not be good at it? Of course so long as we are asking them to do things that is within their expected abilities, or maybe push them a little. I can see how a math teacher might not want to bring in writing because it gives that student a chance who doesn’t like writing to have a class where they don’t have to worry about it. Or an English teacher not bringing in art because this is a chance for the students to just read and write. However, if all teachers were exposing their students to a range of integrated curriculum maybe the students would do better in them all and understand that they have a connection.
In class today we had two great activities. First we got to make measuring fun, by jumping cotton ball frogs with a paper clip. After each “frog” jump we had to measure the distance and write it down so that in the end we had to calculate the average jump of the frogs in my group. I know I learned about measurement in school at some point, although I don’t recall having the chance to be one the ground gathering the measurements. After that we moved on to creating giraffes out of Tangrams. That was quite hard for me at first. Even though I have done this activity before, and probably have even made a giraffe, I had a hard time. Once I thought I saw how all of the shapes went together to form the giraffe I had a hard time seeing it in any other configuration. Once several students had successfully built the giraffe we were asked to use several sets of Tangrams to double its size. That part came easier to me. Once I was able to look at the small giraffe I was able to figure out what was needed to double its size. To challenge myself more I found an iPod app where I can continue to create these figures. So far I have successfully created 3 of the easiest. Only about 25 more to go.
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