I like your point about students teaching each other. I consider myself very young and as a coach and not far removed from being a teenager, I know how teenagers talk to each other. The crazy thing is that the way that kids talk to each other changes every day. They are always learning new slang and have inside jokes and stuff and some day I will be so old that I probably won't be able to understand a word they say. It is great to have students be able to teach other students and put it in terms that their peers can understand. How can we get students to want to help their peers?
"Making sure students are literate" is a great way to rephrase the reading. Literacy may have other meanings that just reading a book.
We had a social studies teacher when I first started in Mapleton whom I found one day teaching a class by reading aloud at a student desk from a textbook. I observed two students asleep. I didn't even poke my head into the room.
Your reference to word problems relates to the 545 reading from last week - metacognition. (I think it was 545...it all blends together) How does a student know if they are able to pull out the necessary information? They need to be "literate" as you put it.
Answering questions in sentence form is what is used in the state work samples. In some cases these override state math (sophomore) assessments.
"Students co-construct through reading, writing, and talking"...yes indeed! Do you think you are going to be able to integrate reading, writing, and talking into your math classes? Are you seeing the math teachers in your school doing any of these things? What might make a math teacher not use those processes? You selected some really good quotes from the readings. I'm glad that you were megacognitive about your "reading" of the text in the Goodman article and how it inhibited your comprehension. The more we can become aware of these things the more we are able to structure lessons that support comprehension of any symbol system.
Seriously! ;) I took notes during all the Yodios and for things I wanted to comment on, I wrote:
Student-driven literacy/ students teaching each other - covered by Jeremy Reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, how will you incorporate all of these into math instruction - covered by Jill.
I guess the early bird really does get the worm.
Math can be a really challenging area for a lot of students, but do you think it would be possible to have kids at that level "speaking" and teaching part of a lesson. Maybe in groups? I only remember being lectured and given homework, every once in awhile we would get in groups to check each others work, but I don't recall any "out of the ordinary" work in math. Ever. That makes me sad. Despite this, I LOVE math. I like that there is a right answer. What about viewing? Any good math videos out there for high schoolers or middle schoolers?
Oh, how could you every say a math book is a dry read!?? I started actually reading my math books (not just skipping to the problems) in college and I was astounded by how much better I comprehended what I was doing. I do know that the reading part in a math textbook can be boring, but consider this: testing is done in "textbook" language. I was considering this when I was helping a new boy from Japan in his math class. He knows how to do the work but he does not always understand the question or the instructions. His teacher, who has been teaching the advanced math, was not thinking it was necessary to go read over the introduction, but what I thought, was that there were probably many key terms that the student needed explained to him that would show up in "word" form in a question. For instance, "probability" questions are asked as "what is the probability", "what are the chances" and "what is the likelihood"--this student knew how to do the math, but he had no idea what "probability" meant, and I imagine that was a term explained earlier. That does not mean that all chapter introductions should be read, but it is something to consider, especially in the case of ESL students.
I sort of got off track from your yodio, sorry. Anyway, it is excellent that you remembered to mention the use of having students help eachother, because they often have ways to explain something that we might have never considered (or forgotten!). They are, indeed, a good "secondary source" as you said.
I like your point about students teaching each other. I consider myself very young and as a coach and not far removed from being a teenager, I know how teenagers talk to each other. The crazy thing is that the way that kids talk to each other changes every day. They are always learning new slang and have inside jokes and stuff and some day I will be so old that I probably won't be able to understand a word they say. It is great to have students be able to teach other students and put it in terms that their peers can understand. How can we get students to want to help their peers?
ReplyDeleteDave,
ReplyDelete"Making sure students are literate" is a great way to rephrase the reading. Literacy may have other meanings that just reading a book.
We had a social studies teacher when I first started in Mapleton whom I found one day teaching a class by reading aloud at a student desk from a textbook. I observed two students asleep. I didn't even poke my head into the room.
Your reference to word problems relates to the 545 reading from last week - metacognition. (I think it was 545...it all blends together) How does a student know if they are able to pull out the necessary information? They need to be "literate" as you put it.
Answering questions in sentence form is what is used in the state work samples. In some cases these override state math (sophomore) assessments.
"Students co-construct through reading, writing, and talking"...yes indeed! Do you think you are going to be able to integrate reading, writing, and talking into your math classes? Are you seeing the math teachers in your school doing any of these things? What might make a math teacher not use those processes?
ReplyDeleteYou selected some really good quotes from the readings.
I'm glad that you were megacognitive about your "reading" of the text in the Goodman article and how it inhibited your comprehension. The more we can become aware of these things the more we are able to structure lessons that support comprehension of any symbol system.
Seriously! ;) I took notes during all the Yodios and for things I wanted to comment on, I wrote:
ReplyDeleteStudent-driven literacy/ students teaching each other - covered by Jeremy
Reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, how will you incorporate all of these into math instruction - covered by Jill.
I guess the early bird really does get the worm.
Math can be a really challenging area for a lot of students, but do you think it would be possible to have kids at that level "speaking" and teaching part of a lesson. Maybe in groups? I only remember being lectured and given homework, every once in awhile we would get in groups to check each others work, but I don't recall any "out of the ordinary" work in math. Ever. That makes me sad. Despite this, I LOVE math. I like that there is a right answer. What about viewing? Any good math videos out there for high schoolers or middle schoolers?
Oh, how could you every say a math book is a dry read!?? I started actually reading my math books (not just skipping to the problems) in college and I was astounded by how much better I comprehended what I was doing. I do know that the reading part in a math textbook can be boring, but consider this: testing is done in "textbook" language.
ReplyDeleteI was considering this when I was helping a new boy from Japan in his math class. He knows how to do the work but he does not always understand the question or the instructions. His teacher, who has been teaching the advanced math, was not thinking it was necessary to go read over the introduction, but what I thought, was that there were probably many key terms that the student needed explained to him that would show up in "word" form in a question. For instance, "probability" questions are asked as "what is the probability", "what are the chances" and "what is the likelihood"--this student knew how to do the math, but he had no idea what "probability" meant, and I imagine that was a term explained earlier. That does not mean that all chapter introductions should be read, but it is something to consider, especially in the case of ESL students.
I sort of got off track from your yodio, sorry. Anyway, it is excellent that you remembered to mention the use of having students help eachother, because they often have ways to explain something that we might have never considered (or forgotten!). They are, indeed, a good "secondary source" as you said.