IF YOU'RE READING THIS, THIS IS MY BLOG

I found this teacher's blog that talked about how he used "foldables" in his middle school math classes all the time. The point of them was for students to combine rules they had been learning in class and apply them to many different situations. I included a picture of one of the foldables he had used. I especially like how there are blanks in the definitions of each rules that the students must fill in. This tool allows students to have something to go back to and look at when trying to solve other problems that might be giving them trouble. I especially like how this condenses their notes and puts the main ideas in one place. 117

Chapter six in “Subjects Matter” does a great job of explaining how we as teachers should most effectively use a textbook. I can remember so many teachers that would just assign a chunk of reading and as a student, it never engaged me in the text and I never wanted to read what was assigned.   As teachers, I think it would be much more beneficial to only assign reading that has purpose and is relevant to your teaching. Often times, when kids don’t like to read, it’s because they don’t see the purpose in it. We are doing a disservice to our students when we present our subject matter in a boring, monotonous way. Another point I liked is that as teachers, we need to be empathetic to our students. This applies in so many ways but specifically, I think it is so important to put ourselves in the shoes of our students when assigning reading. What takes us twenty minutes to read could take our students forty five minutes. Whatever we assign, we should always take this into consideration....

I enjoyed learning about and presenting on the "Tweet the Text" strategy lesson. I think this is a very practical strategy that I can see myself using in the classroom. One of my favorite things about this strategy is that it incorporates something that students are already familiar with so that it becomes engaging to them. I like how we allowed the students to enter their tweet electronically so that we could see all of the tweets together and discuss them. An unexpected problem that occurred was that our link was giving some students trouble so we had to send it to them a different way so that they could submit their tweet. Technology can always be a little unpredictable so having a backup way to do it on paper would be a good idea. A good point that was brought up in class was that students might not be able to handle using their phones to complete this activity so having them write it on a piece of paper as a sort of exit slip might be a good way to execute this lesson. ...

I think this tool is so useful for students especially when they first begin to solve word problems. One of the biggest problems I remember as a student was reading a word problem and then not knowing what the problem was asking me to do. This sheet tells students synonyms for common math operations so that they know what operation to perform after reading the problem. I like how this sheet separates the different operations and clearly shows which key words match up with what operation. This could be such a useful tool to have students become familiar with and use when doing problems.  104

Chapter eleven does a great job of explaining the role we have as teachers to promote reading in our individual content areas. As a future math teacher, I was starting to doubt my ability to teach difficult math concepts along with reading skills to my students. After reading this chapter, I started to realize that there are many things I can practically incorporate into my classroom to help struggling readers. The article explains that one of the first steps to helping develop reading skills is developing students trust. “If students experiencing difficulty are going to take the risk and give math or science or foreign language a new try, they need to know that you’ll be there to help, and that they’re in a safe place where they won’t suffer further hurt if they don’t succeed on the first attempt” (Subjects Matter, 280). This quote sparked my attention when reading because as a student, I was very shy when it came to participating in class. I can only recall a few teachers that creat...