Tech Post 1: Differentiated Technology

iPod Touches are a fantastic, relatively-affordable way to provide differentiated instruction.  Below are a few ways that I see iPod Touches could be used to help some of the students in my classroom.

For students who are advanced readers, the iPod Touch provides access to an Amazon Kindle app, on which all of the copyright-free classic literature is available for free!  Students will be able to access more literature through this electronic medium than is available at their school (and even local) library.  Also, the iPod Touch has a free app that accesses Dictionary.com, allowing students to look up words quickly and build their vocabulary as they read.  Having access to this literacy-development tool would be purely beneficial as long as students are reading on the iPod Touch at appropriate times during the day.

Many students need a starting place for organizing their responsibilities.  Thus, instead of the soon-to-be "old-fashioned" paper planner, students could use the organizer on the iPod Touch.  They have the options of creating voice memos for themselves, typing brief reminder notes, or using the calendar feature.  For this to be truly effective, the students would need to be issued their own iPod Touch for the year and be responsible for taking it home, charging it, and treating it with care.   The iPod touch offers a great opportunity for students to develop their organization and accountability skills.

The iPod Touch has many free apps that offer reference material, such as math formulas and explanations for how they're used, how they originated, and examples of the formula in action.  These reference materials could be used to help support students who thrive with visual aids.  Also, this kind of iPod Touch tool could help students learn how to make the most of their resources and develop independent learning skills.

The iPod Touch could also be used as a keyboard/typing instrument.  Many students who have physical trouble writing cannot get the assistance they need to scribe, and they do not have access to a computer to type.  If students had iPod Touches, they could use these to assist them in completing assignments which would otherwise require hand-written work.  One disadvantage of using the iPod Touches for this purpose would be that typing is difficult and there is no Word document format for the iPod Touch.  However, using this tool to help students complete work would probably still be more beneficial than having students sit around when the rest of the class is doing hand-written work.

Some students prefer to not speak in front of the whole class to offer their opinion.  Thus, having iPod Touches would provide a way for students to participate in surveys and other real-time problem-solving without having to speak in front of the class.  Ideally, other strategies would be used to help all students feel comfortable sharing their ideas with the class.  However, this is a great interim activity that would help all students participate by using a different medium.

Math Week 2: Manipulating Questions ≠ Questions + Manipulatives

Today, I learned all about the art of questioning.  As math teachers, we should never give answers or tell students that they're right...they'll shut off their brains.  Make students work together to find solutions.  Give them the tools they need to problem-solve and check their own work so that they build confidence in math ability. 

What else did we explore?  Make use of manipulatives whenever possible!  We learn every other subject by starting with concrete information and examples and move to abstract thoughts and concepts.  Why do we teach math the other way around?  So, by using manipulatives as tangible, concrete examples, we can begin to shift math teaching to align with the way the human brain is accustomed to learning.

I'm still wondering about a few theories.  If students rely on the use of manipulatives on tests, then how will they solve the problems on standardized tests?  How do we build a community that doesn't judge a student because they still need to use manipulatives to solve problems?  Also, we can be very "sly" to use tricks like think-pair-share so that students are held accountable for their group members' success, but that still doesn't negate the social issues that middle school students are going through and the feeling that students are at differing abilities if they use different math problem-solving strategies.

Math Week 1: ...Say what?

I love hearing how different people solve math problems!  It always seems that no matter how many different ways you come up with to solve a problem, there are always other people who have figured it out using another method.  In today's class, I learned that we need to build a supportive, patient classroom community so that all of our students are comfortable sharing their mathematical thinking.

I am still questioning the use of cards/randomness to call on students to share their ideas.  I liked the way that this tool was used at the beginning of each activity, to break the ice, and then substituted with "does anyone have a different way of solving this?" so that we didn't see too many repeat answers.  Nevertheless, even though our classroom environment is very supportive, there still seems to be nervousness when it comes to sharing our mathematical thinking with our classmates.

The activities that we did today were extremely engaging and inspired exploration and learning.  This type of activity will be a great tool to use in our future math classrooms.  The bonus is that these activities truly cover all of the state standards!