Final Synthesis Blog

I was surprised and thought it was a mistake when I first saw the classes I was supposed to be taking. I'm math and science, why do I need to do a literacy class? I was scared that I would not excel in such a class, since I'm not going into Language Arts for a reason. Reflecting on this semester, it's not what I was expecting at all. This class has been a really positive and eye-opening experience for me as a future educator, and I only wish that all education programs offered such a class.  I didn't think that I could be talked into having novels in a math class-yet here I am!

In this course, we have learned many methods for ~synthesizing~ literacy into our classroom.  I think the initial turn-off many educators experience is that they think the expectation from this course will be that we ignore our content and read poems and novels every day.  That is not what this class is getting at at all.  To be an effective teacher, your students need to come to class with the basic skills required to understand your lesson, and many of them do not have the reading abilities to understand what you're talking about in higher-level mathanese.  You are part of a team of educators responsible for each student, and you are failing them if you don't help get them where they need to be, even if it means reading in math.  The big idea here, though, is that if you don't have time for novels in your classroom, that is a-ok!  There are so many reading strategies available that directly relate to your 

class and what the students are learning.  Teachers can use literacy in their classroom to simultaneously increase the students content area understandings as well as their general reading skills.  Examples include KWL's, where students have an opportunity to refresh on what they know about a topic and pinpoint what they would like to learn about it, and later refresh on what they learned from the lesson.  The writing format of this assignment allows students to access their knowledge throughout a lesson and record it for better long-term memory.  Additionally, teachers can use these to understand the basic concepts the class knows and what they actually got out of a lesson.  With Post-it response notes, students can record their thinking as you go through a lesson, making them more aware of the events taking place and inscribing it better into their memory.  Both of these are major ways for students to practice literacy while not taking away from, but actually adding an additional layer to your content area lesson.  

I found it interesting that many of the preservice teachers in the article Teachers and Content Area Reading: Attitudes, Beliefs, and Change did not have the changed feelings that I had.  My inclination is that their coursework was not as clear cut about how literacy can be in their classroom, rather it be a class reading of a novel or simply literacy-including activities.  I understand teachers' feelings that a novel would take too much time away from their class, but I would still feel inclined to do it.  My preference would be a novel that has some math concepts that year, but it would only take 10-20 minutes each week and it could have such a strong effect on not only the literacy skills of my students in both math and language arts, but on the relationships I form with my students as a result of this leisure time and step outside of the norms of a math classroom.  Here's a wonderful resource I found that lists math books with their related grade level and the concepts they address.  This is something I definitely see myself referring to in two years.  My goal would be to design a whole class year or semester around a book, having each unit themed around the chapter(s) we read right before learning the materials of the unit, and having my classroom decorated in such a way.  I really wouldn't do this just on the basis of having literacy in my classroom; I truly think this would be really fun and interactive for my students to be a part of.

Additionally, here is an article that states out 10 Ways Literacy Can Promote a Deeper Understanding of Math, if I haven't convinced you yet!  My favorite "Way" was to have the students explain to a partner how they solved a problem.  I think the best way to go about this would be to have partner A do one problem and partner B do another, so that they truly feel an obligation to their partner to teach it well enough that their partner will learn from them.  I enjoyed these "ways" because they are all pretty logical and have a natural flow in a classroom with minimal planning required.  I know that a major concern going into the teaching field will be the shame I may experience trying to bring literacy into a math classroom.  However, I would feel encouraged to speak to the needs of the classroom and the difference they can make. It would be my hope that literacy would not only be a part of my classroom, but that multiple classes could thread the same text through, helping students to relate concepts between different content areas and to learn literacy in every class!

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Author's Note: Thank you Mr. Robinson for a wonderful semester :)

Podcast Clip

Podcasts

This article was a little bit disappointing, as I have become accustomed to reading articles with the results that the researchers had hoped for.  However, I think the article still proved something! Although the podcasts may not help more than a traditional textbook practice, they certainly help equally.  I wouldn't favor a class that was all textbook based or all podcast based! This study helped me to see the value of a podcast as one of my many teaching resources.  I really enjoy podcasts in a non-educational context (I've been listening to Dirty John all morning), so I could see how they benefit different types of learners as well.  I had never thought about podcasts for language learning, but I could definitely see how it benefited these students in learning English.  It really got me to thinking about learning Spanish with podcasts.  It's really interesting as well to think about the oral literacy students become engaged in when they are listening to a podcast.  I’ll be interested to look for math podcasts as I’m getting into lesson planning, but I know that if I end up in a science classroom there will be a lot of podcast support for my lessons! I hope that my peers and I can become leaders in the future generation, using new methods like these to support our students' learning.

Reflection

I think that our presentation today went really well! We chose a really good picture to break up, and the class seemed really excited about what was going on in the pictures, much like future classrooms would be.  They also seemed engaged in the idea of looking towards the future-suggesting possible concepts/units that would follow the picture we showed.  Something I would have added to the lesson would be having guiding questions prepared when showing the students.  We had talked about one or two beforehand, but it would have been even better if we had students thinking outside of the box instead of following the lesson strategy to the tee.  I also would have fully done one of the strategies in the demonstration.  I didn't want to spend a ton of time on it, but I think it caused confusion that we only used one picture and it wasn't broken up.  A better solution would have been to do a mini sequence strategy, and quickly run through three pictures with Danjela.  I also wish we would have written down students ideas throughout the presentation, and had a spot within our presentation where we address the ideas they had earlier after the big reveal.  These are all really small things, and I do want to emphasize how successful I thought this was.  I love the strategies this book has because they all do such a wonderful job getting students engaged in learning, and I do believe our presentation as well as the strategy we presented encompassed that idea.

Bed with Slats

      This quilt is a part of Caleb Shaw's art collection, and this particular art piece is called "Bed with Slats".  The quilt is a part of a collection from the 1800's, created by enslaved African Americans in the US.  One thing I really enjoyed about this piece is that it was created by enslaved African American women, with very little education.  However, this quilt is a supreme work of art, mathematics, and beauty.  Although these women did not experience formal educations, they had to be very intelligent and creative to make a quilt such as this.  It's empowering, since women back then were not allowed to be mathematicians, but they had mathematic abilities.

        I thought that this quilt art piece had a place in my mathematics classroom, because I could show them how they could be quilt mathematicians too.  I could have them identify shapes and the areas of them (using a real quilt or a print out).  Additionally, the students could practice creating a quilt using little shape pieces and I could sew it for them and keep it in the classroom.  This kind of activity could make them feel connected to such an old practice and make them feel like young mathematicians.

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New Generation Math

Why Common Core Math Problems Look So Weird

The youtube video wouldn't show up to embed, but here is the link!  My friend recently tagged me in this on Facebook, so I know that it is getting shared around and this is a question a lot of people have.  Parents throughout the US, who often did fine at their kids' grade level, can't seem to do their kids' homework.  This is because of Common Core! The video explains that while we used to learn the quick tricks to solving math problems, we are now working towards instilling a deeper understanding of math problems and why these tricks work.  Anyone in Middle Grades Math can attest to our learning of these newer methods in our current classes.  Beyond that, I believe that the common core standards lead students to have higher level thinking in all areas.  There is a much larger focus nowadays on math word problems, so that students can see the realistic use of mathematics outside of the classroom.  It's important that literacy as well as math literacy be addressed in our classroom in order for our students to succeed in a modern classroom.

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Making Great Teachers Fantastic

        I really enjoyed this video for a number of reasons.  First of all, I really liked that she was already a good teacher to begin with.  We often hear about how a teacher is doing a bad job if they do this or that and need to make corrections.  She wasn’t making corrections because she was doing a poor job, she was simply improving herself even more. I also enjoyed that the techniques the teacher was recommended to use were very clearly stated.  She wasn’t told “You need more literacy practice in the classroom”. Instead, she was told to create vocab activities, have more interaction with the board, and have different activities for different tables and skill levels in the classroom. Additionally, the video showed her before a class, during a class, doing the meeting with the expert, preparing for the class a week later (and the subsequent challenges/strides), conducting the class, and reviewing with the expert as follow-up.  I felt like I really got to see every element of the story and understand how and why these were effective in the classroom. There were two strategies that really stood out to me that I would have never thought of on my own.  The first was to attach relatable images to vocab words.  The students could see boiling pasta for evaporation, for example.  The vocab cards added to that, since she was familiarizing the students with a common learning strategy for high school and college students.  I also would have never thought about the importance of having students write on the board. It’s exciting to see them come up and feel more special than if they had just called out something, and, as they said, it does keep them engaged since they may be called up. When teachers are writing on the board, they often call on students they know will answer correctly. This strategy could be used to get students ready to go up whether they were meaning to or not, and it wouldn’t take long for this to have the effect of having students more comfortable making mistakes and learning from them in your classroom environment.

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