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Current Understanding (December 2007): One of our goals as educators is to provide learning experiences to support a student's intellectual, social, and personal development. I have enjoyed working with the seventh grade class at LCWM this past semester on a regular basis so that I could get to know students and their interests. This made lesson planning much more enjoyable and meaningful as I attempted to connect the new material to student's prior knowledge and interests. The Middle School Presentation listed as an artifact highlights some of the developmental and instructional needs of the middle level students. In a math classroom, one of the ways in which we can enhance student learning is through the use of manipulatives and cooperative learning. I did this at LCWM in the lesson I taught on equivalent fractions. I had students manipulate fraction strips in order to create equivalent fractions, and then discuss with their partners other equivalent fractions. The Triangle Inequalities lesson I created was even more geared towards enhancing student learning by applying a discovery-based math approach. The students worked individually with spaghetti noodles to create triangles and then form a conjecture about their findings. They then tested their conjecture with a partner's data and made adjustments. This strategy allows students to actively engage with the material as they create the data themselves, test their data, and then fix their conjectures accordingly. In a setting like this, students are not expected to have a correct answer right away, so they can use their failed conjectures as an opportunity for learning. There is no penalty for testing out various hypotheses before coming to the correct conclusion, and a student who does just that will mostly likely walk away with a more solid understanding of the material. Another way to enhance student learning is through the use of interdisciplinary units. The interdisciplinary unit I listed as an artifact for this standard demonstrates how students can work in cooperative groups to gather and analyze data in their math and science classrooms. The interdisciplinary journal reflects on how math can be connected to various subjects to enhance student learning, and answer the student question of "when am I ever going to use this?" It highlights one way that we can show students that math is all around us. When we draw multiple disciplines together, students start to make connections that they did not see before and realize that all of the subjects are interrelated. August 2007 Understanding: The more time I spend working with younger children, the more apparent it becomes that no two students are alike in our classrooms. This can be problematic for teachers who are striving to challenge each student and create a safe learning environment. Understanding how children and young adults develop overall is important, but we also must know each of our students individually in order know where they are in their development. A simple, informal evaluation of our students can give us great clues as to what their interests are, what style of learning best suits their needs, and what motivates their learning. I enjoyed working in a 6th grade classroom for one of my math methods courses. I was working with a small group of students on a new problem solving technique, which we covered over the course of two days. On the first day, I had ideas, examples, practice problems, and a very long lesson plan. I also spent some time evaluating my students and finding out more about them and what they enjoy doing. On the second day, I re-wrote most of my lesson plan, used examples that were within those student's interests, had other styles of learning (from paper based to writing on a board), and incorporated a game into the lesson. That second day was so much more rewarding as a teacher because the students were engaged with the lesson from the time we started until the session was over. Simply evaluating the students and applying that newfound knowledge made a huge difference in our success. Baseline Understanding: Educators must remember that no two students will be alike. This creates a humbling situation for teachers as they must strive to reach out to all students at various levels of development and challenge them to reach the next level. Return to Standard 2 |
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(507) 625-8256 l karipratt@charter.net |
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