Wrap up

The class is just about over.  In fact after I write this there will be nothing more to do for this class.  So now would be a really good time to chronicle or at least visit some of the things that were really good about this class.  The things that I really want to remember to implement when I am a teacher.

Frayer Model

A focus of the class was on various kinds of instruction and also language.  One of the areas that would really help me as a math teacher is the vocabulary instruction.  There are a ton of vocabulary words in math and we try to be very specific in our writing in mathematics.  The various activities like the Frayer Model with definitions, examples and non-examples and the semantic feature analysis with the concepts down one side and plus or minuses whether the attribute applies to the concept or not.  Frayer Model and Semantic Feature Analysis Example. Other activities include having students create their own definitions and also creating word webs.

Another aspect of the class that I felt was really stress was having group discussions with groups of 2-5 instead of having whole class discussions.  Whole class discussions are dominated by the teacher and then maybe a couple other students that enjoy talking in class.  But having the groups allows people that aren’t as bold to share their thoughts.  This doesn’t mean getting rid of whole class discussion.  It means that whole class discussions are a good time to share highlights from individual groups.  Then you really get the best answers or at least a good variety of answers.  This helps all students.  It especially helps those ELL students in your class because they have a smaller group to try and participate in.  Maybe you could have a group of ELL students that discuss in their native language and hopefully one of the students will speak well enough that they can contribute the ideas of the group of ELL students.  Learning is a social experience and it should include multiple people.  Being able to learn from your peers is very important just like learning from the teacher.

Comprehension and text selection is also a very important facet of teaching.  There are a number of texts that are available to teachers and for students.  Some are more accessible than others but they should still be used when available.  As part of my text set I found an app in the Apple App store that I think is awesome.  It is called Khan Academy and it is not only for mathematics but also has instructional videos about science, humanities, economics and finance.  Another big focus of comprehension instruction was that it builds students’ metacognition and it happens before, during and after reading.  So there should be activities to help comprehension before, during and after reading.

A comprehension strategy was making and checking predictions and inferences. Another was observing text features like headings and author chosen vocabulary word to understand the main points of a text.  Summarizing and visualizing were a good tools to check comprehension after reading.  Making connections is another comprehension strategy that helps connect different concepts and make relations.  Asking questions also helps comprehension because then you can think about what you understand and maybe what you don’t understand.  Then ask something about what you don’t understand.  Then, of course, a useful during reading strategy is using a graphic organizer to organize all the information that is being learned.

Reading moves into the 21st century

Recently in class we have been talking about digital literacy and I have found it very interesting.  That is why for this blog post I wanted to talked about digital literacy.  The evolution of reading from yesterday to today.  I decided to wait for this subject because for the past 6 or 7 months I have been considering upgrading my phone to an iPhone.  I didn’t earlier buy it earlier because the situation wasn’t right.  But this isn’t a story about getting an iPhone but how I use it.

I love my iPhone.  It is a big improvement over my last phone.  Would I have been happy with any smartphone?  Probably.  I love having apps that allow me to stay up to date with my various interests.  It makes being a fan of the following teams really easy because I just check my app and it keeps me update for everything to deal with the Braves, Jazz, Ducks, Aggies Football and basketball, Ute Football, RSL and even the soccer team in St Petersburg Russia.  I also use my iPhone to play various games and stay connected socially with Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram.  It makes waiting to donate plasma a whole lot more enjoyable because I have something entertain me.  The fourth major thing that I use my iPhone is for reading.  There are a ton of books that are public domain and so you can just download them.  You just have to know where to look.  The most recent thing that I have really enjoyed with an iPhone is having connection to the internet and therefore also a connection to the things that I have stored in the cloud.  I use dropbox for a lot of my school assignments and since you can get dropbox on iPhones it allows me to see those files even when I don’t have my laptop.

I find that I am clued to a screen for a good portion of any given day.  Some times when I am not glued to a screen are when I am in any of my class and also if I am doing my math homework then I am not glued to a screen.  I am also not looking at a screen when I am doing tutoring.  Other than that, for the majority of the day I am looking at some sort of a screen.  Whether on my phone or laptop I am looking at a screen of some kind.  Being in college and without a tv in my apartment it makes it easy to avoid the tv screen.  But I think that that will be a temporary thing that will change once I move on out of this stage of life where I am “a poor, starving college student.”

Earlier I referenced using my phone to do some reading.  What exactly do I read?  I spend a good deal amount of time reading updates, reviews and commentaries on different sports.  After class, I think that this is a really good place for me to make judgments on the credibility of various sources.  I have my preferred app to get my information because I find it to be reliable and I also agree with the commentary that I read.  There were a couple apps that I tried but I didn’t like the reviews that they had or else I didn’t find the commentaries to be interesting and so I read from that app less and less.

Something that I could ask students to do in groups for a term project or something would be to make a prezi.  During class I found this really cool prezi during class.  There have been a couple times this semester where I have “nerded out.”  These are times when I realize that I am a math nerd and I am proud of it.  Here is the link to the Prezi.  I personally have not yet made one but it seems like it would be a lot of work to make one so this would be probably be a group project that the students would work on over a couple weeks.  In my mind this sort of representation could be used as an end of unit project that will show the similarities and differences between concepts from that unit.  For example: in a geometry class a group could share different conditions required to have congruent triangles.  Another group could share the different conditions required to have similar triangles.

After Writing=Reading

Last post I talked about writing and if I considered myself a writer.  To give the short answer I would say no, not really.  The same is true about me being a reader.  Again, like writing I have found times when I have enjoyed reading but I am not one to just sit down and be enveloped by a novel for hours.  Whether it is that I don't have the attention span or that I don't like to sit still for that long the overarching statement is that I don't consider myself a reader.  I find myself super distracted by outside influences when I am reading.  Even if I am really enjoying the book that I am reading I can still get distracted and then I just don't read.  In my college experience the time I would say that I was the best reader was after last semester and before I started to do things for the summer.  I had finally decided that I wanted to read the Hunger Games Series and I ended up reading those pretty quickly by my own standards.  Now as a kid I would read all the time.  I would come home from elementary or even junior high and just get enveloped in the book that I was reading but then that kind of died.  My mom was a big push to get me to read.  We had this rule that we could only watch so much tv and then we had to do other things like reading, homework or practicing the piano.  Then I also remember every summer I would participate in the summer reading program at the county library that was right down the road.  I loved to ride my bike to the library and then back.  It just far enough away that it would take a little bit to get there and then a while to get back because I always came back slower.

So far I have limited myself to talking strictly about books.  But there is more reading that is done than just books.  I do read a couple blogs that my friends or family write.  In this way I am able to stay current with things that are happening with them and their children even though they live far away.  The other thing that I like about blogs is that there is so much versatility in them.  You can change text color, size, highlighting, and you can add pictures and video clips.  There are also probably a lot of other things that can be done that I just don't know about.  I have a friend who really likes to make lists and share these lists.  So he started a blog that was talking about movies and the evolution of movies.  His blog also includes a list of his top 200 movies of all time.  There are some current movies on this list but then there are also some really old ones.  I also tend to enjoy reading the school newspaper however I rarely read news article s from different news stations.  They just don't seem to interest me.

When I think about reading specifically in mathematics initially I think of how there are the dreaded story problems that everybody seems to despise.  Whereas there is not much that can be done about those other things can be done.  As a teacher I could encourage reading by taking problem ideas out of popular books that could possibly spark an interest in a book.  There is a craze about zombies so a problem that could be talked about is modelling how many people will survive a zombie attack.  It would all be theoretical but could give something else to apply things to.

After the beginning comes the discussion

In my mind communication is a huge thing.  In my mind communication is the means by which a person communicates with another person.  There are many different ways that people, and animals for that matter, communicate with each other. Some of these ways include talking, hand gestures, body language, signs and all the other sorts of written language.  Some people are good at communicating and others need help with that.  I would say that I am one of those that needs help communicating.  I would say that one of my weakness is in writing.  I would not consider myself a writer.  There have been a few, distinct experiences where I may have considered myself a writing but that is not common.  Those times were when I really had something to say.  I wanted to remember and recount my vacation to Moscow and so ended up writing 10 pages about the weekend that I had.  I would have definitely considered myself a writer then.

St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, Russia

When I did do that write up then I immediately started to add pictures to that document.  One of the ways that I prefer to express myself is through pictures.  I could try to explain or describe what it was like to be in Moscow for hours but the person I am talking to could have a different picture in their mind.  But then once I show that picture then everything comes together.  I don't have the capacity to be that comprehensive.  Now that doesn't mean that pictures are perfect at communicating a desired message.  But I believe the age old saying "A picture is worth a thousand words."

As a child I also had very few memories of writing.  There were various writing assignments that I had in school.   Then also during the summer my mom would play school with me and I would write some reports on animals but it still had that school mentality.  I did have another moment when I wanted to write.  I decided that I wanted to write a story.  It was called Jeremy Thatcher the Dragon Hatcher.  It was only a couple pages but I was pretty proud of it.

Since then my writing habits has stayed just about the same.  I have never really been one to write poems or songs.  They seemed like something that didn’t really flow for me and I felt limited.  That things had to be a certain way or style.  It is something that I never really pursued.  I do write the occasional email and even more uncommon is writing a letter.  There are more common types of writing I do which include texting and writing on Facebook.  I also notes write notes so that I don’t forget things.  I always hate it when I go to the grocery store to get milk, bread and fruit and end up not getting bread.  Gah!  Frusterating!  So that helps me remember.

In school, there were a lot of writing assignments.  There have definitely been times when I have written a lot of homework and times when it hasn’t been too much.  But the times that I would say that I enjoyed writing was when I had a topic that I cared about.  Something that I was personally involved in and that I cared about.  It helped when I could see how a knowledge about what I was writing was beneficial. The other time when I enjoyed writing was when I was able to take literary license and write short stories.  That was there wasn’t a huge pressure to keep writing and keep writing.  But I could make it as long as I wanted.  The assignments that I really did not like were the opposite of what I just said.  So when there was a topic that I could really care less about or something that I didn’t see how a knowledge of this would be useful.  That always made writing a lot harder.  The last complaint that I will share was when I had to write a certain length.  Whether that was a certain number of words or a certain number of pages.  That was frustrating because there is a limit to my opinion.  Now if there is a rebuttal or a differing opinion then a paper can be extended.  But I found it hard to make my writing be long enough.

Carrying that in over to math is strange at first.  I don’t remember having a lot of writing in my math classes until I reached my undergraduate studies.  It was only then that I really came to understand the importance of writing in mathematics.  Being able to write and communicate is incredibly important.  Half of learning mathematics is learning how to communicate through the language of math.  When I felt confident in communicating and writing about the content I was learning in my math classes then I knew that I had pretty good understanding and my comprehension was pretty high.

Everything needs a beginning and here is mine

My name is Andrew Elmer and I have done a little bit of blogging in the past.  In the future I will be teaching math or stats.  I haven't had too many opportunities to teach many subjects lower than math 1010 and so I am excited for when those opportunities do come.
I love to play sports!  Volleyball, ultimate frisbee and racquetball are among my favorites but I enjoy other sports also.  I love camping and hiking and generally being in nature.  I also consider myself a reader.  It is kind of complicated though.  There are times when I can really get into a book and read it a lot.  But there have also been times where I haven't touched a book for months.  I also enjoy making things with boondoggle.  Now these aren't the lame ones that you make when you start to do boondoggle.  These are legit.

My interesting fact to share is that I speak Russian.  I served a 2 year mission for my church in and around Yekaterinburg, Russia.  That was part in Siberia and part in the area called the Ural Mountains.  Then I also spent 3 1/2 months teaching English in St Petersburg.  While I was there I spent 3 1/2 days in Moscow.  I digress.
There are many things that mathematics mean to me.  But foremost it provides opportunities to do some really good thinking.  I, personally, love brain puzzles and that is what I get when I think about mathematics.  Math also provides explanations for how a lot of things work in nature.  Biology and physics help understand those explanations but without the math these other disciplines have no basis.
I decided that I wanted to become a teacher because I worked up at a scout camp as a merit badge teacher.  I started out teaching in nature where it was really easy because there weren't many scouts to teach.  But then I realized that I liked teaching and that I was pretty good.  So then I taught a more popular merit badge.  I was still teaching a nature merit badge but it didn't matter.  Scouts really enjoyed what I was teaching them and so even though I was talking about soil, the water cycle and endangered species the scouts still loved it.  Most recently I have taught scouts about shooting bows and firearms such as .22 rifles and 12 gauge shotguns.  From those experiences and my experiences tutoring I have really enjoyed teaching and discovered that I am a pretty good teacher.
When I was thinking about how this could work, how I could turn teaching into a career, I had to choose a discipline to teach in.  My first thought: English.  But then I thought about that more.  I don't really have an opinion on that many things and also I don't really want to read a bunch of students' essays. I am not going to teach English.  Next, I thought about math.  Hey, I am pretty good at math and I enjoy doing math problems.  I could be a pretty good math teacher.  Then I thought about teaching some sort of science.  Meh, I like science but not that much.  I thought most about teaching physics but as I thought about it more it is the math behind the physics that I really like.  Physics just has more math than biology or astronomy.  Then the last discipline I thought about was history.  I ended up deciding that I wanted to be a math teacher.
Literacy.  Literacy to me means a number of things.  It means being able to read a book and comprehend what was just read.  Literacy also includes being able to follow instructions, whatever those instructions may be.  Literacy definitely relates to mathematics.  Someone that is math literate is someone that can understand directions that are given.  For example: a literate student would know what to do if asked to "simply", "evaluate", or "integrate" the function.