I work with a number of students who fit some definition of “troublemaker”, “challenging”, or “at-risk”. These are students who don’t see the point in doing their work because they’re convinced they’re stupid and won’t get anywhere. When you try to reason with thme to get them started on their work, they argue as a means to keep them from having to do their work.
I’ve tried to use my questioning strategy to short-circuit that behavior, but I’ve never been able to ask just the right sequence of questions. I think I’ve finally found the answer, though. By continually reframing my questions, I think I might actually be able to get students to be more cooperative.
Sometime, what these kids need most is someone who will honestly just listen to them and acknowledge how they feel. They want someone to believe in them, and they want to know that they matter, regardless of their grades.
Posted by Rebecca as Teaching methods at 8:20 AM EST
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Most of us have a deck of cards and some dice lying around. These playtime tools can help your math student work on their facts.
It works pretty simply. Using the deck of cards, the student draws two or three cards and adds or multiplies them (depending on what skill they’re looking to practice). They can write them down on a piece of paper, or they can sharpen their mental math skills by doing it all in their head. For this purpose, the ace is 1, the jack is 11, the queen is 12, and the king is 13.
Dice work much the same way. You roll them and add or multiply them. For some real fun, head down to your local game shop and get a couple of twelve-sided dice to let them practice the full range of facts they need to know for school. (To really torture your student, get a couple of twenty-sided dice)
Other ways you can use these tools to practice your math is to set up order of operations problems with them. Use the cards or dice to get your numbers, and then mix up your operation. A roll of 5, 2, and 6 could look like 5+2X6 for practice.
See? You can play and study math all at the same time!
Posted by Rebecca as Games at 12:21 PM EST
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It’s not quite what you think. I’ve had something of a long-standing fascination with how Tradable Card Games (TCGs) promote accidental learning in teenagers. (To give you an idea of how long I’ve been pursuing this, I started when they were Collectible Card Games, or CCGs.)
One of my roommates works at a game shop that is considering organizing a Pokemon League on the weekends, and last night he asked if I’d be interested in helping out. I’ll admit it, I was intrigued. Five years ago, I was a co-Gym Leader for the Pokemon League in a friend’s game shop. For as much as I’m not excited about Pokemon (especially in light of what happened to the cartoon this year), I have some very, very fond memories of my year and a half as Gym Leader.
Being a Gym Leader was interesting, because it allowed me to watch how playing Pokemon affected these kids. For my League, it was incredible. The core kids weren’t afraid to approach newer League players and mentor them, both in Pokemon and in the workings of the League. Trading was taken very seriously; the kids would often grab the most recent list of the value of the cards to make sure everyone was getting a fair deal. Even more interesting, a kid who wouldn’t even look at the list was left out of the trading because the other kids were afraid the kid wouldn’t deal fairly. I would love to keep an eye on these kids, just because I think they’re all going to have some strong business skills (most of them are freshman in college this year).
Another aspect I like about Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh both is that I’ve watched kids who complain about not being good at wither reading or math become completely engaged in both aspects of the games. “I hate school because I can’t read well or do math well” gave way very quickly to a kid asking to read the card their opponent just played and trying to keep track of their life points. It’s down and dirty, but any way you can get a kid to practice basic skills is a happy thing in my book.
These kids are also learning to interact with other kids. The old stigma of the anti-social gamer goes out the window when confronted by eighteen teenagers. There were friendships created through the League, and there were some mortal enemies created, but they learned how to control their seething hatred inside the game shop because I had no tolerance for it. They figured out how to work out conflicts without involving us grown-ups. They took the initiative to make sure new kids were absorbed into the culture, thereby encouraging the newcomers to keep coming back.
I realize I’m sitting here talking myself back into being a Gym Leader, if for no other reason than to continue my observations and see how kids in a highly technical area in a quickly evolving world continue the behaviors I saw in my ranchland students.
Posted by Rebecca as Components of Learning, Games at 9:18 AM EST
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I wish I had the solution to this one. I’m now the only upper-level math teacher left at work, and I’m having to give myself weekend crash courses in Algebra II just to make up the gap. Before now, I’ve only had to cover algebra and geometry, which was fine by me.
Being the one nearly all of the high-level math students go through has been something of an eye opener. I had an Algebra II student recently who had no clue when it came to the basics of linear equations and graphing them. This is one of those foundational skills that you really shouldn’t be leaving Algebra I without. I have students who can’t build an equation to solve a word problem. In fact, they shut down when they see word problems, almost as fast as they shut down when they see a fraction that they have to solve without a calculator.
And we wonder why we’re behind in math and technology.
It’s quite a bear to wrestle, but for the sake of our future, it’s one we need to take very, very seriously. I agree with the many articles I read that say we need to completely revamp math education in this country. We need to consider what the students need to learn, and at what level they need to be able to apply what they’ve learned. This may mean more authentic assessment opportunities. This may mean changing the nature of math education to focus on exploration and guided discovery rather than, “Here’s how to do this problem, now go do a hundred problems like it.”
The math team that I was a part of before I became its sole member was focused on trying to explain to students why various concepts in math work. Many students found it incredibly helpful because they suddenly had a logical reason for doing their work in a particular way. When they are confronted with a word problem, they are able to think about what the problem actually is, which gives them a better chance at setting up the necessary equation correctly. Some of them even thank us for the background information, wishing their own teachers would do the same for them.
It going to take a bit, and a willingness to embrace change, but we can get there.
Posted by Rebecca as Reflective teaching at 7:57 AM EST
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In an attempt to motivate to work on my math book and to reacquaint myself with some forgotten tech, I’ve decided to attempt to create a PowerPoint presentation for some of the concepts covered in my book. I’m starting with the articles I’ve already written. I started thinking about this project a couple of weeks ago, and then last week everybody started talking about SlideShare (which I still need to check out, but sounds like it might bea good place to put my slides when I’m done with them.
It’s already been an interesting experience (and I really feel a bit behind the curve as I’m starting out). I’m formally acquainting myself with storyboarding, despite the fact I’m no stranger to it. I’m trying to figure out what I can and can’t make PowerPoint do. I’m trying to figure out how to best cover the material.
I think I’m going to have to bust out a graphic design program to make all of it happen the way I want it to, but I like working on my own graphics, so it should be fun.
If this works out, it will be a great test to make sure I really want to pursue educational media, and leave me with something for a portfolio in the process. (So will my game if I find the time to work on it again.)
Posted by Rebecca as e-learning, Teaching methods at 8:17 AM EST
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Somewhere or other, I have this great quote about how we don’t know what we know until we’re asked to use what we know.
This is actually one of the great challenges of teaching, tapping that tacit knowledge. We ask what a student knows, the students spouts back maybe a tenth of what he or she actually knows on that topic. We give them a practical exercise, and suddenly they know a lot more.
I’m still combing through all of the links, but I think this article addresses some of the concerns in tacit knowledge and its tacit uses. It’s a tricky subject, sure, but then again aren’t most topics in education a bit sticky? It’s hard to quantify what we do.
Posted by Rebecca as Knowledge Management at 1:57 PM EST
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Do you suffer from math anxiety?
If you do, definitely follow that link. It debunks a lot of the misconceptions on why math is so difficult.
As a math teacher in a tutoring center, I encounter all varieties of math anxiety every day. I’ve seen it take the form of emotional breakdowns, sever behavioral issues, and even a weird form of short-term amnesia. I sympathize with my students every time. It’s only recently that I realized I let two years of my life define my perceptions of myself as a mathematician.
Don’t get me wrong, I definitely hit a few bumps in my pursuit of mathematical knowledge growing up, but none were imprinting as the two years I spent with a teacher who really didn’t teach. It never mattered to me that I nearly aced Algebra II, Precalculus, and Calculus. It never mattered that I was the curve-breaker in my College Algebra and Trigonometry classes. I seemed to focus on those two years when I failed Algebra I and nearly failed Geometry, the two maths I now teach beautifully.
Math is just math. It’s a bunch of numbers and symbols, granted, but there’s something very common sense about how they work together. You use math more often during the day without ever realizing you do it, without suffering a math-related panic attack.
The next time you find yourself panicking over a math problem, just tell yourself, “Don’t be scared, it’s just a little math.”
Posted by Rebecca as Components of Learning at 11:46 AM EST
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It’s little more than a collection of interesting links and definitions, but I think the vocabulary alone demonstrates what makes creating learning experiences fun.
It’s also a bit of a wake-up call to the larger education community. These are the terms that are going to vbecome commonplace as we try to shift the educational paradigm to fit the needs and skills of our students in this day and age.
Posted by Rebecca as Experiential Learning at 8:22 AM EST
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