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Communicating –Speaking, Writing andSketching –

About Math!

Sioux Falls, South Dakota

June 7, 2011

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Demonstrating math in the context of a story makes it relevant and more meaningful for students.

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Making math relevant to students helps to engage them in their mathematics education and demonstrates that math isn’t just a school skill – it’s a life skill.

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There are three ingredients in all my stories.

Words

Pictures

Math

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Studies have shown that students have the capacity to internalize and find relevancy in what they draw, and they easily make connections to other areas of learning through their image-making.

 Jessica Hoffmann Davis. Framing Education as Art:

The Octopus Has a Good Day, 2005.

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Visual Learning Practices SupportDifferentiated Instruction

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Why Differentiate?

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All students are different.

One size does not fit all.

Differentiation provides all students with access to all curriculum.

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Differentiation is classroom practice that looks eyeball to eyeball with the reality that kids differ, and the most effective teachers do whatever it takes to hook the whole range of kids on learning.

Tomlinson, 2001

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General Principles of Differentiation:

Respectful Tasks

Flexible Grouping

Continual Assessment

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Respectful tasks offer students the opportunity to explore essential understandings and skills at degrees of difficulty that escalate consistently as they develop their understandings and skills.

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Flexible grouping permits students to move in and out of various grouping patterns. Grouping can be determined by ability, size, readiness and/or interests.

They can be whole group, small group, or individual, and teacher led or student led.

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Continual assessment is about making sure that the right students get the right learning tasks at the right time.

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Differentiation can take place through:

Content

Process

Product

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Differentiation is according to students’:

Readiness

Interests

Learning Profile

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Anchor activities:

Puzzles

Games

Books

Manipulatives

Computer activities

Projects

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The Birds:Assignment: Cut out a paper bird, about the size of your

hand.  Make it clever, creative and unique. 

It must have two legs, wings, and beak, (in other words be anatomically correct for a bird) Use at least 4 colors.  Don’t let your friends see what type of bird you are creating.  There were 25 birds in all, so 2 kids made 2 birds.  25 is a good number for fractions and percentages.

           

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Once all birds were complete, the kids came to the carpet and we sorted the birds by all sorts of attributes. “This set of birds has pop-up wings, this set doesn’t.”  or “This set of birds have something in their mouth.”  When we created the sets, the kids had to come up with the corresponding fractions, and if possible, put that fraction into simplest terms.  Like, “5/25 or 1/5 of the birds have striped legs.”  After we agreed that the fraction was correct, we came up with percentages, knowing that each bird represented 4%.

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Individual Fish Bowls:

This was the first time doing this on their own. 

Homework Assignment- cut a symmetrical fish bowl and draw and color 12 fish.  The next day in class, they water colored over the fish then completed the attribute chart.

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The Coral Reef:

 Assignment: Create something found in a coral reef. Make it clever and unique. 

We sorted coral reef creatures just like we sorted birds, the kids are getting more and more clever with their sorting rules.  Once we found the fractions, percentages, decimals and new-ratio!  (Ratio is NOT in the new content standards for grade 4 but it came very easily to the kids.)

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Cathy Kuhns4th Grade TeacherCountry Hills Elementary SchoolCoral Springs (Broward County) FL

Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching, 1998

 

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Response to Intervention: Response: Behavior resulting from the

application of a stimulus. Intervention: To come between as an

influencing force.

Webster’s New World Dictionary, 2nd Edition

Visual Learning Practices support RTI:

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Assessment: Capabilities Attitude Behavioral Issues

Intervention Strategy: Monitor Student Progress Maximize Student Achievement

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RTI Related Visual Learning Practices:

Draw a Model

Make a Sketch of the Word Problem

Visualize the Math

Engage in the Math

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Visual Instruction Strategies:

Display materials that help to explain ideas.

 

Have students search for real-life examples and report on their findings

to the class.

 

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Encourage students to sketch as part of their math note-taking process.

 

Encourage students to draw models of word problems.

Group students to work together to create models of new concepts.

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Work with students to create concept maps of mathematical ideas.

Maintain a math literature library in your classroom.

 

Create visual models to help bring math to life.

 

 

We want our students to:

talk about math

We want our students to:

talk about math

sketch about math

We want our students to:

talk about math

sketch about math

write about math

We want our students to: express their ideas

demonstrate their

understandings

explore their creativity

about math.

We want our students to:

be fluent

in the language of math.

Thank you!