Book Club Response

Overall, I think that book clubs are a great way to make reading fun. Although I think they can get a little tricky to navigate, I think book clubs would be a great thing to incorporate into my math or science classroom. It may be difficult to find an entire book to read in a math or science class, but I think even having mini book clubs for excerpts or short readings would be beneficial. I would love to read an entire math or science book in my classroom, however, I don't know if there are any that are engaging and informational. The book I am reading now, The City of Ember, has many science related topics but I don't think it would be a good move to read the entire book; the book discusses topics but does not explain or go in depth about these topics. The sticky notes strategy is one of my favorites and definitely something I will use. I think that the most beneficial way to navigate book clubs and use sticky notes is to assign each student a specific reading strategy to focus on during their reading time. Giving students free reign to write what they want to on their sticky note may draw attention away from the reading strategies.

One thing I enjoy from our LLED book clubs are the handshakes. While we may not think they are all that fascinating, I can only imagine how excited students would be about it!

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Kaylie Herbert

Strategy Lesson Reflection

I think that our strategy lesson, front loading with images, went fairly well. I think that Maegan and I worked well as a partnership. We both contributed equally to the power point, notes sheet, and lesson plan. We both spoke equally and contributed to the group discussion and overall presentation. Another thing that went well was engaging the class in group discussion. We used the turn and talk strategy deliberately so that the students could participate in a low stakes partner discussion before we brought the whole class into the discussion. We also planned who was going to talk about which slides, how long the students got to discuss, how long students had to read the article, planned questions to ask about each slide. Mostly everything that happened, we had planned for.

Although many things went well, there is one main thing I would do differently. During our group discussion, Caroline brought up the idea of starting with an abstract picture and then move to more concrete pictures. I think that this was a wonderful idea and one that I would implement if I had to teach this lesson again. Many of the picture we showed were very similar (mountainside, ski slope, slide, staircase), but in the future I would add maybe a picture of slope on an actual graph. I think that showing only pictures of slope in the real world creates a disconnect between material and application. If I only ever show them slope in the real world, students may not realize what slope looks like on a mathematical graph.

An unexpected challenge I faced was presenting to people my age. Presenting to my peers is very nerve racking for me and I was very anxious going into this presentation. However, I think that the success of this strategy lesson helped me come out of my comfort zone.

Overall, it was fun, and I REALLY enjoy this particular strategy J

Kaylie Herbert

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Resource Blog #5

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-Rocket-Science-of-World-War-2-Cross-Curricular-Project-2395354

This source attached above is a cross content-area project. It is a project for a science classroom that can also be connected to math and social studies. The project is about the science behind the rockets used in World War II. For this assignment, students must look at rocket data and will eventually calculate some travel times of rockets. Students must also be able to look at a map of Europe in 1938 and show/pin point how far rockets would travel given their velocity and speed on the map. This project can be aligned with curriculum in the social studies courses including WWII and the rocket science involved in WWII. It can also be connected to math through calculations, interpreting data charts, and comparing ratios.

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Kaylie Herbert

Content Differentiation

I think that this video did a wonderful job of explaining how to use differentiation across science content while also explaining why we should use content differentiation in our classrooms.  I think that differentiation is one of the most important aspects of classroom culture. Having multiple different ways to present the same concepts helps students understand the content more deeply. It may also allow a student to understand the concept even when they didn't understand it the first way they were presented with the topic. Content differentiation helps with student engagement and reaching all areas of the academic level. Bringing students up to the board, doing labs as a class, involving every student in group work, and supporting students to use every day scientific vocabulary are all ways that a teacher can use content differentiation. It is not useful to teach every topic the same way. Constantly changing or adding new strategy creates an environment that supports engagement and facilitates learning.

The strategy that really stuck out to me was the puzzle piece idea. She had a name on the back of each puzzle piece that corresponded to a group members name. Not only did this activity get everyone at the table involved, it got them involved at a level in which they needed. The academic level of the children in her classroom was a broad spectrum, so she wrote the questions based on their academic level without telling them that was the case. I think that this is a wonderful idea and supports successful group work. Every student has to read their question to the group and answer it before they can move on. If they do not know the answer then they must ask their group for help.

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Resource Blog #4

https://venngage.com/

This website is called Venngage. It is a website where students can make infographics, venn diagrams, resumes, proposals, posters, presentations, flyers, newsletters, etc. It would be an amazing cite to use for incorporating multimodal strategies in classrooms. There are templates for almost anything you can think of. There are opportunities to edit the template that include adding new pictures, changing the text, and designing your own template. I think that this resource could be used as an after reading activity as well as an interdisciplinary strategy. You could have students create a multimodal project that crosses content areas and requires then to represent their math data using a chart and their history data using a timeline. This website could allow students to have the freedom of creating each thing and then putting it all together in one presentation. It could also be useful after giving students a content related math and then asked them to create a infographic (or 3 useful tips) on how to multiply fractions. You even could give them information about protons, neutrons, and electrons and have students create a 3-way venn diagram relating the three terms.

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Resource Blog #3

Weaving Math and Language Arts Literacy

The article above is from the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) itself. This article describes a five-step process founded by The Algebra Project (AP). This five-step process is very useful for math teachers who are struggling to make the connection between mathematics and language arts. This five-step process uses a shared experience as its base and allows students to build upon it through communication, pictures, and common vocabulary. Step 5 is titled Symbolic Representation and is seen to be the hardest for math teachers to complete. This step allows students to stray away from the one, set language of math and use their common vocabulary when explaining their thinking.

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Kaylie Herbert

Chapter 6: How to Use a Textbook

Textbooks, math textbooks in particular, are a complex monster that intimidates students. They include language that is hard to understand at first glance but also language that is difficult to remember 10 minutes later. They are long, hard to understand, and sometimes more confusing than they are helpful. This chapter provides many different strategies to help students better understand the textbooks they are reading. The section of this chapter that I thought was the most interesting was the last section titled “Get a Better Textbook!”. This small section provided a lot of insight for me as an inspiring math teacher.

I know from personal experiences that math textbooks can be super helpful but also very confusing. I remember explicitly that my AP Statistics textbook was one of the most challenging texts I have ever read. Nothing in the textbook ever made sense to me, it was all just black squiggles on a page. I noticed throughout the course of that class that I comprehended the material better when my teacher gave us a different platform to read from other than the textbook. Anything was better than reading that textbook, whether it was a worksheet, story, note page, powerpoint. Anything. I think that if we, as teachers, can adopt different platforms and teach from many different literacy texts, we can do better job of reaching all students no matter their reading level or learning strategy. Subject Matters states that “It’s more important to be vigilant, to be on the lookout for new materials that might suit our students better” (Daniels and Zemelman 201). Moving away from textbooks and into more interesting, relatable texts will engage more students and allow students to better understand more challenging material.

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Kaylie Herbert

Resource Blog #2

http://letsreadmath.com/math-and-childrens-literature/middle-school-mathematics-literature/ 

The above link will take you to a long list of literature books about different math topics. These books are picture and story books about common math topics that students will be learning about in their appropriate grade level. There are book for grades 3-12 and these books range from multiplication to fractions to statistics and so on. The first book on the list is titled A Gebra Named Al. This book is about Algebra. You would never think that a book about Algebra could be a fun story about a Zebra. But I think it would be fun for middle schoolers to go back to the basics of reading picture and story books to help make Algebra a more relatable and fun topic to learn. This is a good resource for teachers who are struggling to get their students engaged in learning and teachers who are struggling to connect literacy and math.

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Kaylie Herbert

Chapter 11: Help for Struggling Readers

Struggling readers are not just an issue for reading teachers. If a student is struggling with reading and comprehending a word problem in their math class, they probably will not get the correct answer. Struggling readers have a difficulty shuffling through word problems to find the important information and to find out what the question is really asking or just have a hard time focusing. Students will re-read a passage multiple times and still not know what they have read. Many people will not make a connection between language arts and other content areas. However, there is one connection that must be made; if a student is struggling in language arts and/or reading, that student is more than likely struggling in another content area course. This is because reading is one of the foundations of learning. It can difficult for a math, science, or social studies teacher to teach subject material to a struggling reader who cannot truly understand the content area reading material.

Jennifer Hernandez from Downers Grove South describes many steps she takes to help struggling readers. The step that I want to highlight is the listening step. She states that “students can often verbalize much more extensively than they can write, so get them talking and point out that they can now write down what they’ve said” (Zemelman 282). This quote really stood out to me, because students often struggle writing in math. The majority of students will be able to think out and verbalize their way through a problem but when asked to write how they solved the problem, they go blank. I think this is an important strategy to have because it allows students to actually show you what they know and then write it down to the best of their ability.

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Kaylie Herbert

Resource Blog #1

Dan Meyers is a high school math teacher who provides us with a new meaning of what mathematics is. He goes into detail about what the issues are in the math curriculum, specifically mathematical reasoning, and poses many solutions to these problems. He describes students as being less critical thinkers than they should be. He says that the world needs more "patient-problem solvers". A term that is only reachable by redefining word problems, encouraging mathematical conversation, and moving away from the textbook and into conversation. I think this video was particularly helpful in describing what it means to be a critical math thinker, how to encourage students to get there, and is a good resource for teachers when problems in this area arise.














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Kaylie Herbert

Chapter 2: How Smart Readers Think

Reading and comprehension across all subject areas has never seemed that important to me, until now. Now that I want to become a middle school teacher and strive to be the most effective teacher I can be. Given that I have spent many years reading many different articles and passages, when I am given a passage to read, I read through it and unconsciously make connections to my prior knowledge. I rely on my understanding of related material I already know to make an understanding of the reading that is front of me. Middle school students may not, in fact probably will not, have the same prior knowledge I do on certain topics. It is my job as an effective educator to provide my students with schematic cues and triggers that bring prior knowledge to the surface and sometimes provide new knowledge necessary for understanding the passage that is given. Reading comprehension relies heavily on prior knowledge and is hard to master if not given to appropriate information before reading.

  

If this is what reading involves, what can I do as a mathematics and science teacher to help my students read effectively? Daniels and Zemelman answer this question perfectly when they stated, “If we understand that reading is not just ‘receiving a message,’ but actively building upon prior knowledge, using staged, strategic thinking, then we will teach differently” (Daniels and Zemelman 41). I was not aware that reading relied on prior knowledge as much as it does until I was forced to read the passage about RNA research. I was not able to make any connections to the passage because I do not have a strong background in that scientific field. If I was given a pre-passage about what RNA is and what the function of RNA is, it might have made the passage easier to understand. I will take this new information and implement the use of prior knowledge in my classroom to allow my students to better understand their subject-relevant reading passages.

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Kaylie Herbert