Measurment

Friends, I am so sorry I forgot to post earlier this week! I have total responsibility for the blog being posted late.

Chapter 19: Developing Measurement Concepts presented a discussion on how important the concepts of measurement are. For my New Literacies project in Language Arts, I plan to use a comic strip to present numeracy. To me, numeral literacy is how we use mathematics in the functions of our every day lives. I use concepts of measurement all the time from when I cook my breakfast in the morning to when I set my alarm at night.

I learned quite a few new ideas from reading this article, specifically the measurement instruction sequence of experiences. Many times when students are learning measurement, they do not conceptually understand what they are doing, they are simply connecting two points and counting. Students must first learn that measurement is a means of making comparisons. Next they will understand that the comparisons are made by using units that produce a number called measure. Measurements are made by using a common unit to make the comparison. I also learned that nonstandard units make it easier to focus on the measurement and they can be motivation to students.

I like that this chapter had a lot of examples and activities. They will be useful for reference when I am teaching measurement in my classroom.

Week 6 Post

I found the article on lesson study to be extremely interesting and relevant to our class right now. There was a lot of dislike when the math lesson was assigned and I believe that lesson study and the lay out of that project are similar. In my eyes, watching someone teach is extremely useful, especially when we will spend so much time next year running the lessons and classroom on our own. Also the idea that it is led by other teachers is very useful. Teachers often look at researchers or educators as being out of touch with the classroom. This means that they often do not believe that what they are teaching them is feasible in their classrooms. If this is led by a fellow faculty member, someone they know well and respect, it could have a huge benefit. The teachers may believe in the idea or process more and see how it can be implemented into their classroom. I know that I feel more comfortable when discussing something with my peers than with an authority figure. This most likely is also true for most teachers, since we are almost them :). I liked the way that everyone being involved in the planning is stressed. That might be a problem that American teachers see with this plan is that their ideas and processes will not be a part of the lesson, and they don’t like that. But, I believe that by stating u front that everyone’s ideas are important and everything will be decided together will help put some teachers at ease with the entire situation.

Week 5 Post

After going over the readings for this week, I was able to compare man things from them to the classroom that I work in. From the “Student Mistakes” article I was able to draw many similarities from the kindergarten classroom to the first grade classroom that I’m in. One of the first things I saw was the use of the calendar and how the students use counting techniques. One aspect of the calendar that I really like about how my CT uses it, is that she has the students tell the next numbers for the calendar and then has each number with a different color and pattern on it. The students then get to guess the pattern and need to get the correct number, pattern, and color for the number to go up. Following the calendar technique, I’ve also noticed that my first graders sometimes show signs of how the kindergartners would say “60” as a “5 and a 9” then a “5 and a 10”. When something like this does happen, usually the student picks up the mistake or has help from the other students in the classroom. Another common mistake that the article showed was students seeing numbers like 730 as 70+30+0. I have seen many mistakes like this in my class when comparing larger numbers. For some reason place value in the hundreds place is difficult for them. Place value is a very important aspect to math learning and something I feel that needs to be drilled into students at a young age so they can get a really solid grasp on it.

Week 4

I am glad to have read the Smith and Stein article, as I know have a set of guidelines to check the level of thinking involved with a given problem. This article highlighted the importance of task selection. It made me more aware that there are different levels of thinking involved with different types of questions. However after reading the article I still have a few questions. The concluding paragraph of the article says, “in this article we shared our findings concerning the importance of beginning with a task that has the potential to engage students at a high level…” I wonder what they mean by beginning? The beginning of a class period? Homework assignment? Unit? Lesson? The answer is probably all of the above. But then I ask, when are low-level thinking questions relevant?

In the Kabiri and Smith article I learned how important it is to base instruction of problems with different solution approaches and many levels of the solution. It promotes higher-level thinking for the whole class and an equal opportunity for all students to succeed. It was very helpful to see examples of how to turn a traditional problem into an open-ended problem. Specifically, the algebra problem reminded me an assignment that I was given in my high school algebra class. Each student was assigned five numbers, for example 5, 5, 3, 6, 7, and was asked to use any combination of operations and parentheses to compute the numbers 0-100. The problem was open ended and allowed students to be creative with a multitude of solutions. I specifically remember feeling extremely proud of myself at the end of the assignment.