Engagement

Keeping students engaged is hard. Very hard when they are not interested in the subject. But by frequent questioning and asking students questions it seems that they become more engaged. Infact instead of being mad that they have to answer a question they seem happy that they get to be involved. Questions, questions, questions.

Individual White Board

I Have started doing homework assignments in class on individual white boards. This has allowed me to get much more one on one time in with each student. It seems that doing this changes there focus from finishing before the bell rings to getting the problem correct. I really enjoy this and will keep doing it in the future.

Watching PE

For one of my observations in Ray's class I watched a PE class, weightlifting. There were many things that I saw in the class that I liked and would like to try to implement into my class, but also somethings that were just two different to be used in math. One thing I liked was that the kids could get started and monitor themselves during warm up. I thought this was great, and would like to get my students to do this with their math warm ups. Then they went into the weight room and started lifting, again it was done with minimal instruction because they knew what they should be doing. I liked this a lot because it showed that the students had the routine down. However I believe that in math instruction is needed, and that students could not be asked to cover a whole lesson with out any help from me.

Unsuccess.

Trying to think of a specific teaching strategy that doesn't work is hard. Then I realized that it isn't the strategy that doesn't work, it how you use the strategy that is the problem. For example. Lecture is a necessity in math class. BUT Lecture is horrible if you try to do lecture for the whole class. I like to mix lecture with Drill and Practice, or with questioning. Without the interaction part the lesson is lost upon the students.

Accelerated or Individual Math

One strategy that I am very interested in is Accelerated math. This strategy allows students to work at there own pace. Completing homework, quizzes, and tests at there own speed. This allows for advanced students to work ahead, while letting other have extra time on topics. This strategy would be most ideal in a perfect world, but seems very hard to implement in the classroom. One tool that maybe able to help with this problem is an online course. We have online courses at our school called Oddesy Ware. It has lessons, homework, quizzes, tests and even projects for the students to complete. This is a type of accelerated math, but it is done with no instruction from me. All of the students in this program either have a study hall, or have a free period to work on the course. But they do not have any instruction or face time with me. What I would like it to have a whole class of students on oddesy ware allowing them to progress at there own rates while still getting instruction from me when they need it. I would not be preforming lectures but instead one on one instruction. This also has some draw backs. One would be class size, as class size increases the amount of students I can cover in one period would decrease. Another is resources I'd have to have enough computers for every student in my class. A third problem would be keeping students on task, because if they take to long on a lot of topics they could possibly miss out on finishing the course before the end of the semester.

Other Blogs

http://eoumtemathstrategies.blogspot.com/ Dirk- Math
http://teachingstrategiesandmethods.blogspot.com/ Troy- Spanish
http://spanishforthemasses.blogspot.com Dakota- Spanish
http://fleshmansteachingblog.blogspot.com/ Jason- Social Studies
http://www.extremepeteacher.blogspot.com/ Jason- Pe

Classroom stragegies

As I listen in class I often hear people give an example of what happens in either your cooperating teachers room, or in your room that I really like. So I thought that if you have a method of instruction, homework, questions, classroom management, or other that we could make a list and people could pick and choose what they liked. For example, I heard Kyle talk about the focus card in his classroom. I really like that idea, because often I have a student who provides just enough distraction to get under my skin, but not enough to warrant a referral. However, if I keep track of Focus Cards, I can assign a detention after 2, 3, or however many Focus Cards I feel is necessary. Thanks.

Questions

Last week in class I really enjoyed the video that taught us about the use of questions in the classroom. Today I decided to try it myself. I was happy with the results! I had questions that I wanted the students to think about. I didn't want just one student to think about it and tell everyone else there opinion. So I had to ask them to keep the opinions to themselves for just a few moments. Some could hardly contain there excitment to answer, while others found themselves on the fringe of boredom, but I believe as a whole the class took a step in the correct direction of becoming a thinking class.

ps. the hardest part is thinking of the best possible question to ask. And don't make the question too easy.