Article: Assessment design- helping preservice teachers focus on student thinking
For this article it talked about how to make tests and quizzes the best way to find out the most information on a student. Tests and quizzes can be just a way to check memorization and facts but it can also really look at how a student is thinking. The right questions must be asked though to really pull the information from the student. If a teacher wants to just look at the students steps in a problem they can have short answer questions where students write out their whole process of the problem. This way teachers can see where a student might go wrong or if they just made a minor mistake. Using tests and quizzes to have students use higher level thinking can be difficult. Teachers must make sure they are asking the right types of questions. This takes a lot more time rather than copying and pasting some simple math problems for them to do. They recommend teachers to use lots of different types of assessments. All the kinds of assessments that are out there are beneficial in some way. While tests and quizzes have been the main focus of most math classrooms for awhile that doesn't mean you should no longer use them at all.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
March Journal Summary #2
Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. The Value of Guess and Check by: Shannon Guerrero
This article is about using guess and check to help students truly understand word problems and be able to better represent and understand quantitative relationships. Most students are very intimidated by word problems because they do not always understand what the problem is asking and then do not know how to set up the equation to go along with the problem. By guessing and checking their answers they will hopefully be able to reason their way to the correct answer. Guess and check allows students to use logical reason and problem solving to come up with the correct answer. The article also suggests using a guess and check table so students can see where their guesses take them and can decide whether to make them larger or smaller. Guess and check encourages reflection on the original problem, development of algebraic statement, and determination of the reasonableness of a solution. This can also be used at any grade level.
I found this article pretty interesting because I have never really thought of guess and check being an actual strategy. It's nice to see how guess and check could actual help a student to understand a math concept. When I was a student I always hated when my teacher's told me to just guess and check an answer. In my classroom I feel I will want to explain to my students how guess and check can help them. If I had this in my classroom I may not have been so turned off from it. It's good that this article was written to show teachers a way to help make word problems not as intimidating to their students.
This article is about using guess and check to help students truly understand word problems and be able to better represent and understand quantitative relationships. Most students are very intimidated by word problems because they do not always understand what the problem is asking and then do not know how to set up the equation to go along with the problem. By guessing and checking their answers they will hopefully be able to reason their way to the correct answer. Guess and check allows students to use logical reason and problem solving to come up with the correct answer. The article also suggests using a guess and check table so students can see where their guesses take them and can decide whether to make them larger or smaller. Guess and check encourages reflection on the original problem, development of algebraic statement, and determination of the reasonableness of a solution. This can also be used at any grade level.
I found this article pretty interesting because I have never really thought of guess and check being an actual strategy. It's nice to see how guess and check could actual help a student to understand a math concept. When I was a student I always hated when my teacher's told me to just guess and check an answer. In my classroom I feel I will want to explain to my students how guess and check can help them. If I had this in my classroom I may not have been so turned off from it. It's good that this article was written to show teachers a way to help make word problems not as intimidating to their students.
March Journal Summary
Teaching Children Mathematics. Identifying Logical Necessity by: David Yopp
This article is about teachers being able to identify where students are wrong in their logical reasoning. By teachers understanding the logical necessity of arguments they can better find the exact spot students are faulty at in their arguments. An example the article gives is with factoring. The student understood that numbers could be factored down to the same numbers but did not realize they had to be completely factored for their argument to make sense. By working back through the statements the student made the teacher was able to see that they understood part of the concept, but just messed up at one point in it. The author feels it is very important that preservice teachers know strategies for logical necessity and then gives a few different strategies they can try.
I think this article could be helpful in the classroom. It seems to me that logical necessity would help teachers to really understand what their students are getting rather than just giving counter examples to show their arguments are incorrect. However, I felt this article was a little confusing in it's explanation. It was hard to fully understand what I needed to do to use logical necessity in my classroom. I think it is good though that this article was printed though so that teachers are made aware of this strategy. It would be nice to know more information on how helpful it really is for students. In my own classroom I will make sure to have my students walk through a step by step reasoning of any conclusions they draw. This way I will hopefully be able to see where they are getting off track.
This article is about teachers being able to identify where students are wrong in their logical reasoning. By teachers understanding the logical necessity of arguments they can better find the exact spot students are faulty at in their arguments. An example the article gives is with factoring. The student understood that numbers could be factored down to the same numbers but did not realize they had to be completely factored for their argument to make sense. By working back through the statements the student made the teacher was able to see that they understood part of the concept, but just messed up at one point in it. The author feels it is very important that preservice teachers know strategies for logical necessity and then gives a few different strategies they can try.
I think this article could be helpful in the classroom. It seems to me that logical necessity would help teachers to really understand what their students are getting rather than just giving counter examples to show their arguments are incorrect. However, I felt this article was a little confusing in it's explanation. It was hard to fully understand what I needed to do to use logical necessity in my classroom. I think it is good though that this article was printed though so that teachers are made aware of this strategy. It would be nice to know more information on how helpful it really is for students. In my own classroom I will make sure to have my students walk through a step by step reasoning of any conclusions they draw. This way I will hopefully be able to see where they are getting off track.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Video Blog #2: Lesson on Graphs Grade 7
The activity students were doing in this video was creating a story based off of a graph given to them by the teacher. The students were to see how the two variables interacted with each other. The teacher then also had students look at sequences. They were suppose to be able to see how functions are made.
Lesson Analysis 1: Identify several strategies the teacher used to orchestrate and promote student discourse in this lesson.
During the lesson the teacher would try to rephrase questions that students did not understand the first time around. She also would try to make the problems more relatable to them. She would turn the situation around to put them in it so they could think through the problem more easily. The teacher also did a good job of breaking the problem down even more. Rather then focusing on the whole overall solution she broke down where the students were getting confused so that then they could understand the whole problem.
Reflective Task 1: What specific actions could the teacher have taken to improve the effectiveness of learning when students are working in groups?
The teacher stated in her interview after the lesson that she allowed students to pick their own groups, so they were working with their friends. To improve the effectiveness of learning in the groups she could have assigned them their groups in a different manner. She stated that she does this usually but took a risk in letting them work with their friends. Another way to improve it would be to have some of the higher level thinkers with the lower level thinkers so they could maybe help teach each other. It would also help for her to walk around the room while they are working in their groups to make sure they are staying on task and getting the most they can out of the activity.
Reflective Task 2: Describe how the teacher's questioning, and the manner in which student responses are handled, contribute or do not contribute to a positive classroom learning environment?
I thought the questioning the teacher did was a good way of getting students to follow the process they should. She asked building questions so that their knowledge continued to grow. I thought the way student responses were handled did not contribut much to a positive learning environment. Students would just shout out answers and no acknowledgement was made on the correct answer or who made it. If a student did not know the answer to the question I do not think they would have been able to pick it up. One way that there was a positive impact is that she did not negatively respond to any of the responses she did hear. This would help students to feel more confident in trying to answer more questions.
I thought this video was very interesting to watch. It seemed that the teacher had a good understanding of how to build on knowledge students already had. I found it very interesting to see how in depth her lesson plan was and all the different aspects of it. She did not keep the students doing the same task the entire class period which helped to keep the students attention. I think I would be able to use the information from this video in my own classroom someday.
Lesson Analysis 1: Identify several strategies the teacher used to orchestrate and promote student discourse in this lesson.
During the lesson the teacher would try to rephrase questions that students did not understand the first time around. She also would try to make the problems more relatable to them. She would turn the situation around to put them in it so they could think through the problem more easily. The teacher also did a good job of breaking the problem down even more. Rather then focusing on the whole overall solution she broke down where the students were getting confused so that then they could understand the whole problem.
Reflective Task 1: What specific actions could the teacher have taken to improve the effectiveness of learning when students are working in groups?
The teacher stated in her interview after the lesson that she allowed students to pick their own groups, so they were working with their friends. To improve the effectiveness of learning in the groups she could have assigned them their groups in a different manner. She stated that she does this usually but took a risk in letting them work with their friends. Another way to improve it would be to have some of the higher level thinkers with the lower level thinkers so they could maybe help teach each other. It would also help for her to walk around the room while they are working in their groups to make sure they are staying on task and getting the most they can out of the activity.
Reflective Task 2: Describe how the teacher's questioning, and the manner in which student responses are handled, contribute or do not contribute to a positive classroom learning environment?
I thought the questioning the teacher did was a good way of getting students to follow the process they should. She asked building questions so that their knowledge continued to grow. I thought the way student responses were handled did not contribut much to a positive learning environment. Students would just shout out answers and no acknowledgement was made on the correct answer or who made it. If a student did not know the answer to the question I do not think they would have been able to pick it up. One way that there was a positive impact is that she did not negatively respond to any of the responses she did hear. This would help students to feel more confident in trying to answer more questions.
I thought this video was very interesting to watch. It seemed that the teacher had a good understanding of how to build on knowledge students already had. I found it very interesting to see how in depth her lesson plan was and all the different aspects of it. She did not keep the students doing the same task the entire class period which helped to keep the students attention. I think I would be able to use the information from this video in my own classroom someday.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)