Course Reflection

I have been able to find many different websites that will be useful when creating my own lesson plans or adapting lesson plans for my classroom. I have seen the many resources the internet provides for teachers and how they can be used in the classroom. The internet has given me great ideas of ways to differentiate lesson plans for all types of learners and showed me creative ways to teach a lesson. The internet is also a good resource to use when first creating a unit because it is full of ideas. I honestly used Google the most, but many times it brought up websites that were linked to the assignment pages. I like the LearnNC website a lot; I have continued to use it in my internship this semester. I am sure that I will continue to use these sources and others that I am sure to come across in the future. I am not sure that I will continue to use this blog, honestly it has been a great learning experience but I will not look at it until I remember I need something I did in this class. I might create a blog to use in my classroom one day. I really like the idea of incorporating a blog, but I am not sure exactly how I will do that yet.

Lesson 2-Smiling Man

http://eduref.org/Virtual/Lessons/Mathematics/Algebra/ALG0003.html

I would use this lesson as part of my lesson dealing with multiplying binomials and factoring trinomials. I learned the smiling man method/FOIL method when I was in school and I still remember it. I feel this is a neat trick to help students remember how to multiply binominals, allowing them to visually see how the foil method works.  I feel this would really help visual learners and give all learners an association between multiplying binomials and a smiling man.  I realize some students may not like the smiling man or need the smiling man, but it will not hurt them to practice multiplying binomials, with or without the man.  I would create a worksheet for students to use, as well as have them present a problem to the class, where they create a smiling man on the board. This will also help students understand how to check their work when they factor trinomials, by multiplying them back out with this method.

Lesson 1-Political Cartoons

http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=794

This lesson plan on political cartoons is a great lesson to use in a classroom. It gives students the opportunity to look at many different cartoons that the teacher can choose to fit the classroom. The lesson also allows students to look at cartoons for four days, instead of trying to hurry through them in one to two days. I also like that it addresses the many different techniques that cartoonist use when creating political cartoons.  The lesson plan also provides many links for the teacher to use a resource while teaching the lesson.  I would also use another resource http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali/galleryfiles/578/Political_Cartoons.pdf, because it provids good examples and elements of cartoons that can be distributed to students. I also like this resource as an additional source because it explains the cartoons, therefore helping guide discussion as a teacher.

Article 3-Vocabulary

This article stressed the importance of vocabulary in every content area. I feel that sometimes we forget that vocabulary is important in all content areas and that this article helps show how vocabulary can be brought into every content area.  The four high school teacher involved in this article did great activities with their classes, enforcing the importance of vocabulary. I feel this would really help students learn, especially if they are like me because I still have trouble with parts of speech and grammar. If we could enforce the use of vocabulary in all classrooms, students would not find it as hard or as big of a deal because it would become natural to them.

Related Sites:

I really like the wanted poster; they were really neat yet really informative. It was neat to see the poems from different voices too, it showed how different people can have different views on the same topic.  I also like the “I” poems on Katie Blackburn’s blog. I thought it was neat how many of them had pictures related to their “I” poems. There were other “I” poems that I liked as well; it seems they are becoming very popular.

Article 2-The Multigenre Paper

The Multigenre Paper

This article takes an approach on research papers and different ways to recreate them. They talked about many different ways to approach the standard research paper such as, Mystery papers, I-search papers, survey-based papers, newspaper publications, and finally multigenre papers. The multigenre papers allow students to pick their own topic and write obituaries, birth certificates, poems, newspaper articles, interviews, etc about the person or groups life. This allows students to be creative with their work and encourages them to find the facts to make their products correct, instead of writing a formal paper about a certain person or group. This project also addresses many different types of learners, allowing each student to create a product they are the most comfortable creating. Although there were issues deciding exactly how this project would look and be graded, in the end students really enjoyed this project. The interviews said that the students felt they learned more from this project, which still sited their sources, and then they would have in a standard research paper.

 Questions

 How many options should you give students?

What is the best way to grade students?

Is this a good project do with students who have trouble focusing?

Article 1- “I” poems

“I’ poems can be very helpful in the classroom. They help put students in situations where they can pretend to be other things, which help them to better learn about the topic being discussed.  Seeing as many of the books we read in school are written in first person, “I” poems would fit in perfectly with the readings. There are many ways to incorporate “I” poems into the classroom, like shape “I” poems, descriptive “I’ poems, rhyming “I” poems, etc. These allow students to approach “I” poems differently, but still in the first person point of view. I feel these poems could be used as a pre-assessment to gain a better understanding of students’ knowledge, as well as a post-assessment to see what the students have learned.

 

Questions:

When is the best time to use an “I” poem?

How affective would an “I” poem be with math?

How affective are “I” poems with students’ who do not like to write?

Instructional Strategies 4

 

Title your post: Instructional Strategies 4 

Your Name: Cati Robinson 

Name of Strategy: Find the Fake

Source (Where did this come from?): Math-Ese Workshop (pg. 7)

Link to the Strategy: http://www.opsu.edu/www/education/Reading%20Strategies%20Applied%20to%20Math%20Presentation.pdf

Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source:

This strategy allows students to work in groups, coming up with 2 true statements and 1 false statement individually. This would allow students to think of accurate facts about a concept as well as false facts that might be tricky. Students will then test their team mates with their facts/non-facts testing each other’s skills. Students could also rotate teams to test their understanding of a topic or choose one card to test the class with. This would be a good strategy to use at the end of a lesson topic to review information learned and correct misconceptions.

Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity.

This strategy can be used to address many different problems and subjects in the standard course of study. An example would be for seventh grade rational numbers, 1.02, developing fluency in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of rational numbers.

 Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn?

This strategy allows students to demonstrate the knowledge they have learned. Students will be able to present facts to the class and pick out statements that are not true. This will help students better understand the concept and clear up misconceptions if students are not able to identify the statements that are not true.

Instructional Strategies 3

 Title your post: Instructional Strategies 3 

Your Name: Cati Robinson 

Name of Strategy: Anticipation/Prediction Guide

Source (Where did this come from?): Math-Ese Workshop

Link to the Strategy: http://www.opsu.edu/www/education/Reading%20Strategies%20Applied%20to%20Math%20Presentation.pdf

Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source:

This strategy allows students to predict what they think about a concept. They will use only their prior knowledge at first, therefore the student and the teacher will understand what the student already knows. The student will then read an article or participate in a lesson. This will allow students to learn more about the concept in which they predicted about. The students will then go back to their predication chart and answer the questions again in text/lesson column. Next students will compare what they learned and how their knowledge has changed.

Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity.

This strategy can be used to address many different problems and subjects in the standard course of study. An example would be for seventh grade geometry 3.02, which deals with similar and congruent polygons with respect to angle measures, length of sides, and proportionality of sides.

 Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn?

This strategy allows students to demonstrate their prior knowledge and access what they have learned. Allowing students to visually see what they have learned can help their motivation, as well as be a resource for the future. I would use this idea at the beginning of a lesson introducing a new topic.

Instructional Strategies 2

Title your post: Instructional Strategies 2 

Your Name: Cati Robinson 

Name of Strategy: Venn Diagrams

Source (Where did this come from?): Angela Lawrenz

Link to the Strategy: http://www.math.tamu.edu/~kahlig/venn/restaurant/restaurant.html

Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source:

This strategy allows students to organize data. Students will be able to organize information in to several different categories, some of which overlap. Venn diagrams also show a visual representation of data in a problem. Venn diagrams can be used in many different math problems, as we as in other subjects. I would use these to help represent data visually, appealing to different types of learners.

Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity.

This strategy can be used to address any math problem with multiply pieces of information. It can also be used to compare many different ideas in all subjects. One example that venn diagrams can be used is to relate different math concepts, like factors and multiplies, goal 1.05 in the sixth grade math standard course of study.

 Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn?

This strategy allows students to organize information and compare how ideas/numbers are alike and how they are different. Venn diagrams can also be used with as little or as many different ideas to compare and contrast. Students would be able to work on these as a group or individuals, constructing their own knowledge about certain topics.

Instructional Strategies 1

Title your post: Instructional Strategies 1

 Your Name: Cati Robinson

 Name of Strategy: KNWS Worksheet

 Source (Where did this come from?): West Virginia Department of Education

Link to the Strategy: http://wvde.state.wv.us/strategybank/KWLCharts.html

Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source:

This strategy will help students decipher word problems. They will start by identifying the information they know from the information stated in the problem. Students will next identify information that is not needed to solve the problem. The next column/row asks students to identify exactly what the problem is asking for. The last column/row allows students to identify what strategy or operation that will be used to solve the problem. This chart could be used when solving any mathematically problem especially world problems seeing as it allows students to break then problems down. I will first use this strategy with a class problem then encourage students to use this strategy when solving individual problems.

Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity.

This strategy can be used to address any math problem in any grade. I feel that this will really help students with goal 5 on the mathematics standard course of study grade 6-8 which deals with algebra.

 Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn?

This strategy allows students to break problems down into parts. It also allows students to think about each aspect of the problem and how they are going to solve the problem before they begin to work on the problem. I feel that giving students a way to break down word problems will make the problems seem easier. Students will determine exactly what to information to use and how to use it which can be overwhelming when you first glance at a problem.