Meaningful Math

Today in class we talked a little more about Gapminder. The questions came up about it being appropriate for younger grades. The answer to the question was simple yet not what I expected, try it out on someone who is younger and see what they think or what they can do. In this situation I can’t see any negatives to trying it out. This might just be a great site to expose the students to. Maybe that means the teacher uses it to help teach a lesson plan but not have the students be the ones to set up the graph. When the students are working with graphs and data, you could use this to supplement the discussion on what they are learning about. My project now is to give more thought to a kindergarten student using Gapminder. Google search did not give me any ideas so now it is up to me.

Another piece of information I am taking away from today is to empower students to teach their peers. Just like teachers learn more having to teach the material, students learn more when they are required to teach. Another benefit is in the process of being the teacher it helps the students to identify the areas where the material is unclear and needs more development. This reminds me of one of the articles we read about never saying anything a student can say. It might require some more work on the part of the classroom teacher, but allowing the students to “teach” and “say” all that they can, will help them become better learners.

I might say the best part of today was creating the paper boxes. I was very enthralled by this activity. I was not quite sure what the final product was going to be but was very excited to find out. There were two things that impressed me about this project. First there were a lot of math proofs that could be made by simply folding a piece of paper. Second, it was not just meaningless folds but we were actually working to create an end product. HOW COOL. Can all math be like this? This gave a real world application and it was meaningful. Now I have a neat little box to hold my earrings in.

The Fun Side of Math- Through Assignments and Activities

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.

iPod Touch in Kindergarten

In my current thinking about using the ipod Touch to differentiate instruction, I was exploring app land to see what all is out there. There is really a lot. I came across a free spelling app that looked like fun but was not sure if it was something that a kindergarten class would use, since I am mainly thinking how could I use it in my classroom now. In my experience in the class I am in, there is not much of an emphasis on spelling correctly. The students are encouraged to use "guess and go" spelling and to use what they know about letters and sounds to spell. Therefor, I think using an app where they are going over letter sounds would fit in more with what we are currently working on. As this thought passed through my head my friend sent me a text. I pulled my phone out of my coat pocked and read a text saying "Jace has spelling tests. Since when do they do this in kindergarten". Hmmm.....maybe some kindergarten classes could use spelling app. Maybe in fact it could be used in my class. Some of the students in my class are still having trouble with sight words like "the" and "my". Those students might benefit from more exposure and the use of a spelling app at their desks to master the sight words.

To further explore what I could with apps, I searched "iPod Touch kindergarten" in Google. I found a log of great things doing that. Blogs, tutorials, schools asking for the money to buy touches, and videos. Below is a video that I found from YouTube of a kindergarten student reading a book with the help of an app that he types in unknown words and it pronounces it for him.

This is another way that students could use the Touch as they read. If a student had it at their desk with them with headphones on they would be able to use this during silent reading. I am going to have to play around with this app to see what all it does. It would be great if it could record or keep a history of the words a student was looking up. That way it could be passed back to the teacher to see if there is a pattern to what words the student is missing. They might need some more instruction on something like what sound a particular letter makes, or what sound a "ph" makes. This could also be helpful for the students to use in knowing if they have a "just right" book or if it is too hard. The rule could be if you are having to look up more than 5 words than it is too hard. That gives the students a clue that it is is too challenging.

Where my buddy is at, and where we are heading

It has been hard for me to think about and answer the question about my buddy’s need, abilities, and interests. In all of our times together Cathy has been pretty shy. I have attempted to get to know her personally, not only because I wanted to but I thought it would help her to feel comfortable working on the reading and writing together. However, since she has not quite opened up to me I think she has been a little reserved while we work together. During our first reading as I tried to find out what she likes to read I asked if she takes book recommendations from her friends. She said that she did not because they are all better readers than her. At another meeting she was reluctant to go on with the word identification lists because they were starting to get more challenging and I think she did not want to get any wrong. If I did not have these two experiences with Cathy I would say that she is a very smart and confident reader and writer. Using some of the activities that we have done together like talk about her writing, the spelling test, and having her read to me I would say that she has been successful in all of those activities.

The one area where I think Cathy could use some help would be reading comprehension. This might be what she means when she says her friends are better readers. She is great at reading the words on the page and is at grade level when it comes to fluency. However, in trying to talk to Cathy about what she has read has made me think that she has trouble comprehending. We have read and discussed three different texts over the course of our meetings. The first time she read to me I thought she might have had trouble paying attention because she was nervous to be reading out loud to me. The second time she read to me it was from a text I selected. It is hard to say if she was having trouble with the text because of the flashback or if she was uninterested in what she was reading. When we read Amelia Earhart last week and she was having trouble talking about what she read from the text I decided that she could use some help with comprehension. I will be curious to see how tomorrow goes after we read a different grade level text. However, I think I will most likely focus on reading strategies and comprehension for Cathy.

Analysis of Student Writing and Lesson Plan

Analysis
The following analysis has been based on one writing sample I was able to collect from Cathy (pseudonym) and from a spelling test that I conducted.

Ownership and Meaning of the Piece
The piece of writing that I used to support my analysis was a story called "Fish's Day". The topic for the story was from a writing prompt given by her teacher. In talking with Cathy about her writing she said that she liked writing the story but that it was not entirely her idea. she liked writing a story about a fish who could talk but did not pick the topic herself. After she read me the story I asked her if she was going to have a sequel to Fish's Day. She said that she did not plan on doing that but after brainstorming different ideas about what she could write about she said that maybe she would add another piece to the story. From our conversation, Cathy did not explicitly say that she enjoyed writing, but her creativeness and enthusiasm about what could happen in a sequel made me think this was something she liked doing.

Six Traits Assessment
Overall the ideas Cathy was developing in Fish's Day had  a great structure and successfully got the reader's attention. Her topic was clearly identified and was consistent throughout the development of her writing. The title of her story alone allowed the reader to know what the story was going to be about and in what direction she was headed. To help the reader understand the transitions in her story she wrote things like "that was how my day began" and "a few seconds later" and even "a few minutes later". One thing in her story that could be developed a little better is that the reader's questions are not always answered. For example, when Cathy first heard her fish talking she said "she laughed so hard her brother couldn't sleep" but that makes the reader wonder if her brother ran in and also saw the fish talking. Instead Cathy never mentions her brother again.

Cathy's story had a very clear and engaging introduction that let the reader know where the story was going. In contract to her introduction, her conclusion was not as apparent other than the sentence "and that is how my day ended". The reader did not find out if the fish continued to talk or what happened next. Having read this story with Cathy was the cause for us to talk about if there would be a sequel. Another organizational piece was Cathy's transitions. There were times when she went from one thing to another smoothly but at other times there did not seem to be a steady switch but rather a jump. As the character in the story watches the fish swim and talk in his bowl Cathy mentions that the character is eating and that the fish tried to get the fish Angel's attention but he got mad and "Fish bit his head". There was not lead up to that in the story. Cathy did not give any clues to the reader that Angel's lack of response was making Fish mad.

I noticed in looking at Cathy's draft that she continued to develop her word choice. There were plenty of striking phrases in her story. In her draft she crossed out the sentence "I kept on tapping" and changed it to "I kept doing loads of tapping" and finally changed it to "I kept doing truck loads of tapping". She also went through her story to find synonyms for commonly used words like small, scared, and mad. She was successful in fancying up her writing and help to capture the readers imagination with a metaphor she used in relating the fishes behavior to bulls. Her word choices were accurate even while replacing commonly used words for synonyms. I also noticed in the draft that she had trouble with using the correct verb tense. This was a pretty common error in her writing. She had to change "singed" to sang, "hides" to hid, and "sleep" for slept, and "freezed" for froze.

In this piece of Cathy's writing I noticed a variety of sentence lengths and structures. They all have a purpose however, some convey more meaning and produce vivid pictures for the reader through her word choice mentioned earlier. Throughout the story, Cathy also begins the sentences in a variety of ways but resorts to starting with "I" a lot of the time.

Spelling
Not only did I have the opportunity to look at Cathy's spelling with the spelling test I conducted but also in her writing sample. In looking at her hand written rough draft of Fish's Day I was not able to find any spelling errors. Having worked on the spelling tests with Cathy I am not surprised that she is a pretty accurate speller with words in her spoken vocabulary. When we did the spelling inventory, Cathy missed three out of the 25 words (She spelled seller for cellar, comfident for confident, and opozition for opposition). For both opposition and for cellar, Cathy was not familiar with the words. They were not words that were in her spoken vocabulary. After noticing the error with confident, I wondered if I pronounced it incorrectly. However, I used all the words in a sentence so even if pronunciation was wrong the context would still be accurate. Without obtaining any patterns in her spelling mistakes I have trouble trying to decide where she would need work. It appears as though she is pretty comfortable with noticing letter sounds, and changing words to double consonants when needed. The only thing I can think is that she would need is more exposure words since two out of the three spelling errors were due to unfamiliarity.

According to Routman (2005) the students are sometimes not aware that they need to provide information to the reader to understand theie story (p. 145). I believe Cathy was pretty aware that this was something that she need to do to make her writing comprehensible. However, closely related to being able to give the necessary information to understand the story, sometime there is information that is added that does not make sense. This is an area that I think Cathy could use some help.

Lesson Plan
Objective: Student will understand that some information in a story can be irrelevant to the main topic.
Standards:
1.3.1. Revises text by adding, deleting, substituting, and moving text.
1.4.1. Applies understanding of editing appropriate for grade level
3.1.1. Analyzes ideas, selects a narrow topic, and elaborates using specific details and/or examples.
Materials:
Teacher generated piece of writing, pencil, paper, a students rough draft
Instructional Strategies:
To begin the lesson the teacher will read a sample piece of writing, either something taken from text and changed to add details that are not crucial to the topic, or something that the teacher created. Have the student listen and take notes on piece of paper the things that they wished they knew more about, or what stuck out to them as they heard the text read.
After the student identifies some parts of the text that do not lend themselves to the story, talk with the student about what things could be done. It is possible that they could be added with some other changes to the story, or maybe that they need to be deleted.
After the student makes the changes to the text, show the student either where it came from in published book or the revised text that the teacher generated.
At the end of the lesson the student will apply what they learned from looking at different piece of text to one of their own writing samples. This will give the student an opportunity to look at their own writing and wade through the irrelevant details and sentences that distract the reader rather than engage them.
Assessment:
Teacher will assess student's understanding that some information in a story can be irrelevant to the main topic by looking for a the student's revised story with a cohesive flow from one sentence to the next.

A Couple Thoughts on Teaching Math

Today was a great class. One of the first things that struck me today is when one of my classmates said "students need to understand that being uncomfortable at times is ok" in regards to answering a questions that was posed to them. To add to that statement, teachers need to realize that think time is ok for the students and should be given. When I had to teach a lesson last quarter in my dyad I remember asking questions and not lasting through the minimum seven seconds of wait time to allow for more students to think about the question and raise their hand. However, not until I asked a question and found that not a single student had an answer, not even the typical student who threw their hand up first, that I often went with the first student who raised their hand.  Right then I had the students turn and talk to their neighbor hoping that they would then come up with a response. After the minute or two talking to the people near them many of them raised their hand to answer the question. I really want all of the students to get a chance to engage in the conversation and in order to do that there needs to be a couple of moments of think time that might be uncomfortable for both the teacher and the students. However, the teacher is expected to make the situation as comfortable as possible in whatever way they can.

In class today I witnessed something that I would like to use in my classroom. After one of the table groups was called on to share a point from the reading the instructor did not summarize what one of my classmates said but instead chose another student to sum up the statement. This is something I touched on in my last blog but it was nice to see its application because I learned something about myself. I found that I am guilty of waiting for the teacher to sum up what a student’s says after my years of being exposed to many classes where the teacher does just that. When one of my classmates was called on reiterate what was said I thought to myself, “I don’t think I could really do that”. Experiencing this made me realize that I am not that great at listening.

One of my favorite parts about today’s class, which also made my head hurt a little bit, was being introduced to the positive and negative math manipulatives and the algebra tiles. However, when we were using the different manipulatives to help solve negative and positive equations I found that because that method did not come easily to me that it would be challenging to introduce it to students. That is something that I believe a math teacher needs to know. It clicked for some people in my class but not everyone. In a previous Math for Teachers class I took we learned a couple of different ways to solve equations with negative and positive numbers. Although, after learning about these new ways today I think what I learned before is actually more confusing. Instead of using a number line we would visualize or draw a flat like that would be the marker for zero (it was supposed to represent flat land). If you were going to use negative numbers you would have to dig underground and if you were in the positives you would pile dirt up above ground. For example, if had to do the equation -2+-3 you would dig down 2 and then dig down 3 more to be at -5. However, I think this way of solving equations with negative numbers gets confusing when you have to switch the signs. Realizing that there are so many different ways out there to introduce negative numbers to students makes me realize how important it is to be familiar with many different methods.

i Teach With My i Touch

While I have not had the opportunity to use my iTouch in my main placement yet, I am really enjoying thinking about the different uses and how it could be used for differentiated instruction. I am really noticing the different strengths and abilities of the students in the kindergarten classroom that I am in. Some students are reading beyond grade level, while others are still struggling with letter sounds. Some are confident with guess and go spelling during writing time, while others have to ask how to spell something before they can move on. Even during our math time I notice how some don’t want to show their work to solve a problem, while others have to if they want derive at the correct answer.

Thinking of three different students in my placement I believe the iTouch could be used to assist their learning. One of the students in the class is really struggling with matching the sounds to letters and even just saying what sound a letter makes. I believe the use of an iTouch with a phonics app would help her to practice her letter sounds. There is another student in our class that is in a similar situation as the one I just mentioned however she is an English Language Learner. She would benefit from using similar apps. The student learning English has not had enough exposure to our alphabet and the sounds the letters make which automatically places her behind the majority of the class. Another student I believe that would benefit using an iTouch is a student that is doing some therapy for his fine motor skills. Not only would the Touch require precision as he first just selected which app he wanted on the screen, but there are a variety of apps that would help him work on his motor skills throughout their use. There are apps for hand writing where you have to trace the letters, and apps where you have to make matching selections. This would help the student to focus in on what is needed and strengthen his fine motor skills as he used his muscles to make necessary taps of the screen.

For the last student that I mentioned, who needs assistance strengthening his fine motor skills, I could also see the use of the Touch being very frustrating. While I have not witnessed this student get frustrated before, I would be concerned that using a Touch might be too challenging. If he was playing a game on the Touch or just working on something else I could see that it might be discouraging if he continued to touch the screen in the unintended spot.  I suppose a limitation in using the Touch for the two girls I had mentioned that need help with letter and sound recognition is that they might not be able to use what they are learning within the context of a text. If they are just going through drills of letters and sounds and are not able to recognize them outside of the app then they are not able to apply what they are learning.