Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Louzon_Week 2
From the Lester article I was really surprised to see math as being taught through a conversation. Not only did she just give them problems, she also asked them if they felt “comfortable” with the answers that some of their classmates gave. She asked them why/why not they did/didn’t feel comfortable with the answers given by other students. I think that this type of math really allows for a deeper level of thinking. What surprised me was the way she got the students engaged and comfortable with talking about math. I have never experienced a “math discussion.” When I think about math and my past math classes, I think of worksheets and story problems full of math problems, not math discussions. On page 17 in the Rosebery, etc. reading they talk about the importance of knowing your students and their families. Students learn a lot better when they are able to build off of prior knowledge. Along with this, students learn best when they are interested in the lesson. Therefore, the best way to allow students to learn to their full potential is to get to know students and their interests. In the Allsopp, etc. article I was really surprised to find out that it was a misconception that students with attention deficit disorder do not focus on anything. Instead, the students focus on everything that trouble their senses. After reading this, I realized that I have seen this going on in my placement. Whenever there is anything on the desk, a student with an attention deficit disorder is always pre occupied. For example, he will stack the markers or bang the markers against the desk. The only time that he pays attention is if he has everything cleared off his desk. Even though he has an easier time paying attention with everything off his desk, he still does things such as rocking his chair back and fourth or tapping his foot.
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I was not quite as surprised as you when I read about Mathematics being centered around group and whole-class discussions rather than individual story problems and worksheets in the article, “Establishing a Community of Mathematics Learners,” by Jill Bodner Lester. I think the reason that I was not as surprised was because throughout my Mathematics education, I always remember doing activities together in groups or as a class and then having discussions about the concepts before we did individual problems and worksheets. I especially remember doing this in my Seventh and Eight Grade Math classes. My teachers had us learn new concepts by first doing an activity as a group since no one knew what they were doing and then once we understood the concept more we would work individually on similar problems. I also noticed how this article kind of outlined “The Gradual Release of Responsibility” model that we discussed in Literacy on Tuesday. Lester started off by having to scaffold her students learning in the conversations, but later on in the year, she said that even her quietest students were conversing in the whole class discussion without needing any of her guidance. Lester gradually released her students into carrying on a Mathematical conversation on their own. Did you happen to see this connection?
ReplyDeleteThe article, “Classroom Diversity- Connecting Curriculum to Students’ Lives,” by Ellen McIntyre, et al. also got me thinking about the importance of relating and connecting to your students lives. The only way to do this is by getting to know them. Last semester in TE 401, we learned a few different ways to get to know your students from actual teachers. The one that stuck with me the most that I want to try when I am a teacher was the idea of home visits. The teacher actually scheduled a time to either go to each student’s home for dinner, a movie, etc. or met the entire family somewhere like the park or the ice cream shop to informally visit with them in the beginning of each year. He did this solely to get to know the student and the student’s family better. Do you think that you might try this when you are a teacher and do you think that there are any drawbacks to doing this?
I find it funny that you picked out that one thing in the article, “Why Students with Special Needs Have Difficulty Learning Mathematics and What Teachers Can do to Help,” by David Allsopp, et al. to talk about because that is also the one thing that stuck out to me! I have worked with attention deficit students before and I would have never said that they can not focus on anything. All they do is focus on things, whether is be their shoelace, the girl’s hair next to them, or the Mathematics problem on the board from the morning! I think that it is very hard to get an attention deficit student’s attention, especially when there are twenty four other students that you are trying to teach. I do, however, think that this article gave some good pointers to help the attention deficit students learn better.