After reading this article provided by my principal today, I decided to go ahead and do a little reflecting. I figured she forwarded this article to us because this style of teaching is vital in maintaining academic engagement in high-poverty schools.
I definately agree that a warm demander must enforce respect in the classroom and insist students to complete the academic tasks. But… what is warm demander? One who displays personal warmth while maintaining an instructonal style that demands achievement.
To become a warm demander, one must:
build relationships deliberately
learn about students’ cultures
communicate an expectation of success
I really found it interesting that the article pin-pointed the issue of highly disengaged middle school students. These student shared that they were simply bored with the curriculum. Warm demanders must reach out to these students to make content relevant and rigorous to defeat boredom. Check out the article for yourself and discover some additional information to assist you and your students towards the pursuit of academic excellence.
We have Mr. Marc Pernsky to thank for the term digital natives to define the current generation saturated by technology. However there are two types of students that we commonly overlook in the realm of digital citizenry.
Unfortunately there are some children that do not have any access to technology such as computers outside of school, so are they really apt to be label as true natives? This eludes to believe that a digital savage would address those included with technology generation but excluded by outside factors. This blog post from Full Circle Assosiates captures the essence of term digital savage. I posted info about the digital alien before, but the difference between the two would definately be the exposure and dexterity of wielding technologies. Is technology differentiation required to meet the needs for these students?
This weekend I picked up a few things from the teacher store in preparation of the 1st day of school. I passed by and ended up picking up this cool Unifix Sudoku game. As you can see, when I got home, I ended up placing the blocks in ROY G. BIV order and numbered the tops to match.
I also created a Smart Notebook file to go with this activity when modelling the activity with my students. This is a great hands-on activity for students of any age that has never played Sudoku. The purpose for placing the numbers on the cubes is for you to create your own puzzles with the help of online resources such as ultra-magnificent logic puzzle site of Vegard Hanssen. I will post later reflecting what the students thought about this game.
This week I started teaching summer school. One of the few imperative items I go over is basic math terminology. When I discuss the terms of arithmetic problems, I always share this video by 3Xdope with my students to remember the true meaning of dividends in real life and how the video relates to math. Enjoy!
This week as I started watching the beginning of the fourth season of The Wire, I can’t help but to reflect on…
1. My first year of teaching in Baltimore City with real chalkboards and san air conditioning & technology (including calculators).
2. I remember back in 2002 when Mayor O’ Reilly kicked off the Baltimore Believe campaign to lift the spirits of the citizens.
Funny as we go into battle training mode for high-stakes testing, we need to BELIEVE that our students can and will achieve. Also, first year teachers at this time are probably making career decisions based on their experiences from the past eight months. They too must continue to BELIEVE in themselves that they also are important in their craft in making valuable contributions to our children; and are valued for what they do.
Here is one of my posts saved for a rainy day… Well it is not raining but a major ice storm is on the way!!!
Constant: that which is permanent or invariable; a quantity that remains at a fixed value throughout a given discussion
Variable : something that is variable; something whose value may be dictated or discovered
definitions provided by ninjawords.com
Today as I sat in a team meeting where the variables and constants were discussed. Usually these two terms are used in a mathematical way (I was enlightened on this topic because automatically in my brain I could see the application as a Believer.) However, the presenter stated that in school, there are variables and constants.
An example would be the students, they will always come therefore they would be considered constants. You would assume that effective and engaging instruction would be a constant in all classes, unfortunately this does not occur therefore becoming variables. So are variables always seen as negative?
In the classroom (and in life) take a minute and determine what are your constants and variables. Please comment any “ah-ha” moments or what I’ve share is just a bunch of baloney…
This program recruits minority students nation-wide to take challenging high level classes on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, MA. I had the honor to work with Mthomba Bon Amari (formerly known as Anthony Scott). Before he taught any content, he made sure that the students knew the following 8 properties of mathematics.
1. Order – Example… PEMDAS, or even the steps in solving an equation
2. Rigor – Math stands on its own and is different that any other discipline
3. Logical development from simple to complex – The natural progression of difficulty math presents
4. Elegance – the beauty of math such as the symmetry of a butterfly, or the Mandelbrot set in fractals
5. Economy – Saves space; Usage of exponents, scientific notation, math symbols, etc.
6. Exactness – In math, there is only one answer; many paths, but only one destination
7. Abstractness – The concept of numbers not connecting to concrete objects
8. Universality – The answer for 3 x4 is same in the US and Cambodia
If you have the opportunity, please share any comments or share the following information with your students!
Yes… I am a math teacher. However, students must be able to communicate when using numbers. Since reading and writing are important elements of communication, I should give students the opportunity to use these skills in my classroom; especially now high stake assessments in math are less computation and more application and performance-based.
So, I will always talk about writing and reading in addition to math activites on my blog. I ran into this really cool website that maybe more geared to middle schoolers.
With this website, I would use it to challenge my students to create a NEW super hero and write a story, word problem, or narrative chain involving their creation!
If you have any ideas on how to use this website in the classroom, please let me know!
I must apologize for sitting on this challenge for some time. I did have the pleasure of actually doing this with a digital video camera in the classroom. Once the students got past the Hawthorne effect in recording during my lesson, they were actually productive.
On the following day I allow the students to view the video. Next, I had them to write a reflection on their experience seeing themselves in action learning. Unfortunately due to the restrictions of my district (and the lack of time of my behalf) to have students to sign photo release forms, I cannot post the video.
However, I will try this again for it is good for students to see themselves in a form of visualmetacognition (wow, did I coin a new term for this activity)!
Being that the price of gas has calmed down, now we have lots of MATH conversations to share and great data to manipulate!
The above images are great for having students make conjectures or to produce a quick write. To activate students HOTS, have them (NOT YOU!) create problems such as…
1. In each picture, what is the actual price for a gallon of gas? What is the average price?
2. What is the percent of change in price from gas pump A to pump C?
3. Which pump has the closest price of gas now?
We can go on and on, however if you have some additional question to share, please comment! Oh yeah, let’s not forget the awesome data that gasbuddy.com has to share. For example the following graph of the retail price of gas prices in the US. I’m sure you and especially your students can generate great stimulating questions.
After reading this article provided by my principal today, I decided to go ahead and do a little reflecting. I figured she forwarded this article to us because this style of teaching is vital in maintaining academic engagement in high-poverty schools.
We have Mr. Marc Pernsky to thank for the term digital natives to define the current generation saturated by technology. However there are two types of students that we commonly overlook in the realm of digital citizenry.
