Journal Summary: February

From the journal Teaching Children Mathematics I read the article "Transitions from elementary to middle school math". This article addressed some of the main things transitioning students struggle with in math and how teachers can help make this struggle less for them. The main place to start in helping the students is for the teacher to be aware of what the students are going through. Students are seeing a difference in instructional method, work expectations, and general difficulty of material. Teachers need to be sensitive to what the students are going through, stress the importance of the teacher-parent relationship, and recognition that the transitioning process is ongoing and not a single step. Teachers should also be communicating across grade levels. It would be beneficial for 6th grade teachers to observe the 5th grade classroom their students will be coming from and vice-versa. This way each could try and incorporate something the others classroom does, such as independent bell work to begin the class, into their own classroom for a short time so it is not as much of a shock when the students move on. A lot of times schedules conflict for this though and maybe teachers could simply videotape their classroom for a day and discuss what they are doing with the other teacher. Sometimes this does not even happen and what a teacher could try and do is watch a general videotape on that grade level to try and get a sense of what may be going on in their classroom. And finally another way to communicate between grade levels is to show examples of student work to show the kind of quality that was expected and material.

I thought this article was very interesting and put a lot of stress on the teacher to help make the transition easier on the students. The article was sure to point out that just because these students are transitioning schools does not mean they have to fail in any area. I also really liked that the article focused on teachers communicating between each other. In many of my other classes they stress communication between teachers and this article just helped to emphasis that point. A teacher could definitely take this into their everyday classroom. They could try to find a cooperating teacher in the elementary school that feeds into the middle school or vice-versa and try to find out more about each other's classrooms. Even if a teacher doesn't have time to try and contact someone else they can find resources online themselves. Whenever they have a free moment they can try to find corresponding videos to help them be better educated on what their students are going to know or need to know. I also think the teacher can be able to identify how different their textbooks are. Especially in the middle school, if the textbook has too much information and small print, maybe try and print it larger for the students a few times, or provide supplemental representations as well. I think this article is very important for teachers to read and be knowledgeable on because it seems too many times teachers place the blame on students for not succeeding during the transition period.

Schielack, Janie and Cathy L. Seeley. (2010). Transitions from elementary to middle school math. Teaching children mathematics. 358-362.