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A fun resource that I found is the website, coolmathgames.com. I think this is a great resource because it is a fun, engaging way to get kids to want to learn math. I found a few games that require the player to read instructions, memorize them, and then perform math equations based on these instructions in order to get further in the game. I thought this was a good way of building math skills as well as allowing them to practice following written instructions well. Realistically I think I would use this in my classroom as a task students could do if they finish their work early so that it is still relevant but also fun for them. 118

Synthesis Blog Differentiation in the classroom is something that I know very little about. As a future educator, I think this is one of the hardest things to be able to implement in the classroom. This video did a great job of showing practical ways to reach the needs of all levels of students that we will probably have in the classroom. I especially liked the puzzle activity that the teacher did with her students. In this activity, students from all ranges of abilities were grouped together but the questions that each student answered were catered to the individual needs of the students. I liked how the students weren’t separated based on ability but instead, they all got to collaborate and help one another with the activity. Another thing I thought was a good idea is that the teacher presented vocabulary words with the word and also a picture of what the word was describing. I think it is so important to present information in as many ways as possible to stude...

I found this graphic organizer that is used for the pythagorean theorem. I think this is such a good idea to use in a math class because it allows the student to see the breakdown of the rule. In math, there are so many rules that students have to learn and this would really help them be able to know when to use each rule. I like how it makes them put an example of the rule being used so that they can come back to their notes and have it clearly laid out. This could be such a valuable resource in the classroom! 104

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. ...