Classroom Blogging Activity

As a final product for EDTECH 537 I had a lot of fun creating this classroom activity and plan to use it in my classroom this year. I think using a blogging platform to facilitate discussion and inquiry will allow my students to address this question in a more engaged way, something that hasn't happened in the past when I have given the same assignment using a request for a traditional essay as a final product.

Classroom Blogging Activity

Blogging Plan

I have really enjoyed this class and being pushed to blog more regularly. I have dabbled in it in the past, but am finding myself really enjoying it. I was never a journal writer, I would receive beautiful books and journals and have great intentions, but after about 5 or 10 pages I would lose interest. I see blogging as a similar idea, but electronically. The last couple of blog posts we had the freedom to chose the topic and style. I found it fun to be able to think for a minute about a question I had or a thought and then to go out and find resources to support my blog post. Here is my blogging plan for the next two months. I hope that some of you stop in after our class is over and give me an accountability check.

What Change Do We Need?

One of the activities in my "Back to School Kick Off Meeting" this morning was to look at data from spring testing.  It painted a dismal picture. I am new to this school, but in the short few weeks I have spent setting up my classroom and slowly meeting other teachers, I can tell that overall this is a committed, passionate group of professionals who love kids and want to see them learn and achieve. Why are they not?  So much time, debate, conversation, frustration, etc. is spent by many people asking this question. This post certainly contains no answers, but perhaps some things to consider.

I just read a blog post by a classmate who discussed what it was like to live and teach in South Korea, an extremely competitive and high performing country as measured by international test scores. Perhaps it is cultural, but I have to wonder, is the pressure and the stress that students go through worth the test results that they achieve?

I dug a little deeper into another country who consistently performs at or near the top on international tests, Singapore. Looking at this video and the following article one thing REALLY stuck out to me. One major difference between the US and other high preforming countries is the time, money, and overall investment they make in their teachers.



Singapore's Lessons About Education

It does seem to me as a part of the education system that we are trying all kinds of strategies to boost our student achievement, but investing heavily in our teachers is not one of them.

Can Video Replace Education?

Today was my first day back to work. Ahhhh Professional Development.... one of the items that we covered today was a presentation on how one of the teachers in our district has shown significant gains in student achievement to which she attributes in large part to student's use of Khan Academy. Let me clarify by saying that she is an amazing teacher who knows her content and has the pedagogy to match, but she has decided to leverage a technology solution and it seems to be working. Check out the video from Khan founder, Sal. I love how he explains the origins of his organization. It was not meant to be a replacement for instruction, but as a resource to allow students to reference when needed. This was powerful to me. How many times does a student not ask for help when they need it because they are embarrassed or shy. I plan to implement Khan in my classroom this year. I look forward to sharing the results with you.

Math or Reading? A Poll

So I will preface this entry with the acknowledgement that this is a math focused blog. If you have read any of my posts you know I am passionate about teaching math. I often am given a hard time about my enthusiasm for math, and I find that working in an elementary school, I am surrounded by A LOT of resources to ensure kids are successful in literacy, but not as much in math.  I know that I believe that math instruction is just as important as reading, but wondering what you all think?

A study completed by the National Center for Education Statistics completed a study on the number of hours spent, on average, per week on core curriculum in elementary schools. The results are interesting:

retrieved from - https://nces.ed.gov/pubs/97293.pdf

For anyone who has never worked in an elementary school, I will tell you that these numbers are quite accurate. Here is a GREAT article from greatschools.org that discusses why math is as important as literacy in elementary and preschool education. 

So, what do you think?

Video Post #2 - How TO Teach Math

In 11 minutes, Dan Meyer provides the best professional development in math I have ever sat through. I hope you take the time to watch.

Video Post - How to NOT Teach Math to Kids

This has got to be one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE videos about teaching math. While it is quite exaggerated I think that we can all remember a time when we felt this way... "Maybe if I speak louder or slower, they will get it." I never get tired of this one.

Social Media vs. Scholarly Publication: What is the Best Way to Reach Teachers

Today I would like to share a fabulous podcast from two professors who discuss their use of social media in forms such as blogs, Twitter, and YouTube to share their thoughts and findings. They contrast this to their work in publishing scholarly articles and studies and discuss the effectiveness of the different mediums of communication. ENJOY!

Fluent in the Language of Multiplication - The Importance of Multiplication Fact Fluency

In an earlier post I commented on the differences between a spiraled curricular approach and a mastery based one. Is is better for students to work toward mastery of one topic before moving on to the next, or it is better to touch on a broad range of topics briefly every year?

The idea of whether students need to be fluent in basic multiplication facts in a similarly debated topic in mathematics education. Some people argue that students must be fluent in multiplication facts by the 3rd possibly 4th grade at the latest in order to successfully move onto higher mathematics concepts successfully. Remember the timed tests? Remember Rocket Math? Remember earning a reward every time you mastered a fact family? Flash cards? This practice and philosophy have very much been the best practice for years. Others argue that teaching students a set of strategies to help them quickly compute multiplication facts is more powerful than just pure memorization, and in essence is a different type of fluency.

Research does show that in order to free up cognitive load and allow students to progress in more difficult mathematics concepts they need to have a firm foundation in basic computation. When students struggle with basic fact fluency their success rate when working with multi-digit multiplication using the standard algorithm is not good. Below are some articles that discuss the importance of computational fluency, specifically multiplication fact fluency in successful mathematics education.

Developing Multiplication Fact Fluency - Brendaful, J. L.

Innovations and Perspective Blog - Virginia Department of Education

Automaticity of Basic Math Facts: The Key to Math Success?

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics - Fluency: Simply Fast and Accurate?

Math Fluency