Aug

3

Use rich media to engage students’ higher order thinking processes and also to evaluate them.

Filed Under Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students, Graphic Organizers, motivating students, positive climate | 2 Comments

Our class blog and other rich media like cartoons, comics, videos, videocasting etc. that  we used in class last semester really motivated most students to learn and enabled them to demonstrate better what they had learned.

This coming semester  I’m going to continue to use  rich media to engage students and encourage them to stretch their minds from remembering and understanding, a lower order of thinking, through to evaluating and creating , a higher order of thinking according to  Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.

I found that not only is using the rich media a great way to teach students, it’s also a great way to evaluate what they have learned.  Most students were  motivated to do their best on  assessments when they were not the traditional paper and pen assignments that I had used in the past, before we had access to all the new technology.  It was amazing.

That’s not only been my experience either.  Andrew Churches notes

While to many teachers a written report is a suitable medium, to our media savvy students it is boring. Allowing the students to develop their tasks in rich mediums will engage them and an engaged student will learn. Rich Media like, video podcast, enhanced podcasts, cartoons and comics are more likely to engage higher order thinking processes as they plan, design and create their solutions.

See, he agrees.

So of course now, I’m always looking for rich media to use in class to help students develop and strengthen the higher order thinking skills. I recently came across Scott Gardner’s video on You Tube. I think it is especially rich and can hardly wait to use it with my students.  It really is a fine example of higher order thinking. Enjoy.

Jul

30

Free digital tool for teaching science

Filed Under Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students | Leave a Comment

As a special education teacher giving support to struggling learners, I’m always on the look out for yet another way to teach concepts to my students. I figure if they didn’t get it the first time they were taught it in the classroom, it’s time to try another way so I’m always looking for other ways and thanks to @KarenJan on Twitter, I found another way- Molecular Work Bench .

Molecular Workbench is free, open source software which is absolutely great because the budget is always limited. I’ve had a quick look at it, and it looks promising. Have a look for yourself and keep it in mind for when you need an other way to teach a concept.

Let me just say here that I’ve found Twitter a wonderful tool because it lets me see what other people are doing and sharing. I’ve gotten lots of valuable information from the folks on twitter.
At first it was hard to know who to follow, so I started following people whose blogs I read and then started to follow some of the people they were following. Each person has a short biography so you can get some idea what they are about. I just choose people I think are interesting. It’s actually straight forward. Check out the people I’m following, maybe you’l find them interesting too.

Apr

27

What are the esssential qualities of a good math teacher?

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icon for podpress  What are the esssential qualities of a good math teacher? [9:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (248)

I’ve been teaching math on and off now for more than 20 years and I really like it, but for some reason I still don’t think of myself as a math teacher but a teacher who teaches math. I don’t know why that is. I mean, I have my intermediate math qualifications which here in Ontario qualifies me to teach math up to grade 10, and I have attended countless PD sessions over the years to try to stay on top of things. So why don’t I think of myself as a math teacher?

I’m starting to think I feel that way because I don’t have a university degree in math. I mean you can’t take everything at university. You have to make a choice. I chose to major in Philosophy and minor in Sociology with a lot of English courses thrown in for good measure - I tried to do it all. Maybe it’s a self-esteem issue. Maybe at some level I think that because I don’t have a degree in math, I’m not really entitled to call myself a math teacher no matter what my teacher qualification certificate says. It’s not that I don’t think that I’m doing a good job teaching math. I know I am because my students tell me that they like the way I teach because they can understand it, and my students go on to to do well in the next grade- well most of them do.

You know, I’m beginning to think it must be a self-esteem issue or why else would I feel like that about not having a degree in math. I’m quite comfortable teaching intermediate math. In fact, I really enjoy it. I guess I think that having a math degree would give me those essential qualities, those elusive qualities whatever they are, that math teachers have and I guess that I still think I need to get. Was I ever surprised when I found Sean Cavanagh’s article about the essential qualities of math teaching. (I’m always looking.) Cavanagh says research has shown that the essential qualities of math teaching remain unknown. “How can that be”, I asked myself. It’s not like we’ve just stated teaching math and no one has had a chance to figure it out yet. Cavanagh notes that

Research does not show conclusively which professional credentials demonstrate whether math teachers are effective in the classroom…It does not show what college math content and coursework are most essential for teachers. Nor does it show what kinds of pre-service, professional-development, or alternative education programs best prepare them to teach.

How can that be? As I read on, I found that part of the reason seems to lie in the high standard for the type of research that the panel looking into this would be willing to accept. I don’t really understand this either. You mean after all this time, and all the bad press about math test scores, no one has come up with a high enough standard of research? The panel looking into this matter does allow that effective math teaches have an impact on student achievement- 12- 14% of variation in student’s math achievement in the elementary grades The panel concluded

1. It hard to determine what credentials and training have the strongest effect on preparing math teachers to teach, and teach well. Research has not provided “consistent or convincing” evidence, for instance that students of certified math teachers benefit more than those whose teachers do not have licenses.

2. A weak connection exists between teacher’s college math course taking and the achievement of their students at the elementary level, although there is a strong link between the educational background and high school achievement.

3. It is important for educators to have “solid grasp of mathematics for teaching- or an in depth knowledge of specific math needed for their classes and how to make it understandable to students.

What do people not on this panel have to say? Ms Ball, the Dean of education at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, says that schools of education need to provide courses and tests that provide instructionaly relevant content knowledge rather than just providing generic math content. Cathy L. Seely, a former president of the 100 000-member National Council of Teachers of Mathematics argues that teacher training especially for elementary grades should focus on training student teachers to be able to work with students and not just have them become more proficient at advanced math because math in the elementary grades is a different kind of math. I take this to mean that she’s wants aspiring teachers to get more training on how to be an effective teacher and not an expert on advanced math.

So what are the benefits of having math specialist teach in elementary schools? That isn’t clear either. I was surprized to read that some high math performing countries like China and Sweden have math specialists in elementary grades but many other high math performing countries don’t. So what’s the key to higher performance? Heidi Schweingruber says that although there is a lack of high-quality research on the topic, having math specialists teach math in the elementary schools is beneficial as an alternative to trying to raise the math skills of elementary teachers many of whom are subject-matter generalists and a have probably just taken one or two course of math at college. as a whole. Ultimately she say, that

I don’t care if you have math specialists or not- but I think you should guarantee you have someone teaching math who knows it and likes it.

She does say that that someone would probably be a math specialist. Well, maybe. I found the article very interesting on many levels. First, I found it interesting that there was no conclusive evidence regarding the essential qualities of math teaching. Who knew. I ‘m still puzzled by that. Why has no high quality research been done given the importance of the issue? That doesn’t make sense to me. After reading Cavanagh’s article, I’m not so up tight about not having a university math degree since the panel wouldn’t/couldn’t state conclusively what post secondary math courses an aspiring math teacher should take- at least at the level I teach. My intermediate math qualifications seem to serve me well.

After thinking about this for a while and talking about this topic to an intermediate math teacher at my school who has a masters degree in math, I ‘ve decided that yes, I am a math teacher and a teacher who teaches math. My colleague assured me that I am a math teacher because I know the subject matter that I’m expected to teach, and I’m also a teacher who teaches math because I know how to teach kids so that the subject matter is accessible to them. He felt that at the senior levels, teachers needed a math degree to be able to see the big picture so they could better prepare students for post-secondary math courses. He agreed with the panel that math teachers should know their stuff and know how to teach it so that students get it. Cavanagh’s article which was published on-line March 28, 2008 allowed readers to make comments about his article, and they did. I will share one comment with you because it really resonated with me. Cdheaston notes

I have been working with middle school students for 10 years, and I have seen how years of dependency on the calculator and rushing them through the text to get ready for high-stake testing have left many children bereft of basic skills and number sense…and not just students with disabilities. Students who do not know their multiplication facts or how to recognize patterns, therefore do not perceive the relationship between numbers, especially fractions…they can’t reduce to lowest terms, they don’t see the pattern in powers of ten, they don’t know how to read the ruler. Later on they struggle with one and two step equations, slope, ratios… and it goes on and on.

So true, so true. After reading this, I thought it would be a good idea for my grade nine students to learn their times tables. I talked to them about why knowing their times tables was so important and asked them if they would like to have another go at learning them . They said yes, and we talked about learning the times tables by listening to them as rap songs. I found a CD of multiplication rap songs on line, down loaded it and took it to school and played it as the kids came into class. We clapped and danced around the room for about 10 minutes to the six and seven times tables songs. It was great. They loved the songs. They loved the the beat. I told them they would be an expert on a specific times table- for example the 7 times table, the six times table etc. I would be the expert on the 2, 5 and 10 times table, and we would lead games and activities based on our number.

Is this going to work? Will my students be able to remember their times table. I guess we’ll have fun wile the beat goes on. I liked the rap beat so much that I played the Cd during my prep time. That put some smiles on a few faces. Here’s the link to the music. I’m not affiliated with Jack Hartman in any way but I love his CD. JackHartman- Multiplying By Music CD

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