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FInal Synthesis: Importance of Literacy

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Using Art in Math

The art piece I chose is an artwork called Diagonal Cubes . It was constructed in 2005 by Robyn Horn and he used the materials of redwood and graphite. As shown in the image above, the wood is positioned and cut out geometrically and can be easily implemented in a math classroom when talking about shapes. I would personally use this when I have a lesson between 2-D and 3-D shapes, and tie it into the difference between area and volume. I think when introducing those topics and getting them to calculate either area or volume, this would be excellent piece for them to see a physical object and really grasp the idea than just teaching them with books or worksheets. As shown in the image above, I would outline a piece of wood or section and explain how just with the outlined part, this is 2 dimensional. There is only 2 measurements which are length and height. If the physical object is in the classroom and I have the ability to touch the object, I would probably get students to come u...

Book Clubs

I actually enjoyed doing the book cubs in either this LLED class or in our EDMG class. I think book clubs really help make reading easier and motivates students to actually read because you'll need to discuss in a smaller group. If it were a book read as a whole class, remembering myself as a student, many probably wouldn't have read. The student would most likely, or at least students who were like me in high school, just winged the class discussion by hearing others comments and prayed to be either a really good guesser or hoping their are chapter summaries online if there's a test. But for book clubs, you get to choose your own book and somewhat pressures you to read because there is only about 3-5 people in the group. The good thing though is that the discussion isn't pressured. It really feels like you're just having a discussion so I definitely believe it makes the students have a much more enjoyable experience than class book discussion. I would say though,...

10 Tips for Book Clubs in Classrooms

Link: http://cpet.tc.columbia.edu/one-book-book-club/book-club-in-the-classroom-10-tips-for-success Since we are starting our book clubs soon, I decided to do a resource blog in ways to make it a success! This page gives 10 great tips to successfully implement book clubs in classrooms. These are definitely for teachers and I think it explains things that we should keep in mind if we want to do a book club in our future classrooms. I hope everyone checks it out!

Differentiating Students

This concept of differentiating is extremely important for teachers to understand. We all know and is reminded repeatedly throughout our education life that everyone learns differently. There are people who needs to study hard with books in a quiet area, there are people who can study while they eat, there are visual learners, active learners, etc., etc. We all learned differently in our own classes and I believe that all our teachers tried their hardest to apply all their tools to help each and every one of us. I mean this is the reason why we learn so many strategies on how to teach students in all our courses now because there are so many ways to teach a concept, and in this generation, technology is a necessity to incorporate in our lessons. This idea of using technology was particularly emphasized in the video. We can see how using the smart board really gets students excited and engaged in the lesson by doing activities on the board and having students themselves interact with ...

TedxTalks: "I don't do Math"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y44nqo11Fh0 This video is a TedxTalks that explains the importance of STEM literacy. Emily Calandrelli defines being STEM literacy as a "way of thinking" instead of being extremely scientifically smart. For example, going to the grocery store and knowing what are GMO's or what benefits organic products have are all STEM literacy. I personally like how she suggests  that STEM literacy is a survival skill and that its important to pay attention because it affects our society and how the world is effected based on it. I think as future educators, particularly in the STEM subjects, its important to keep in mind the importance of STEM literacy and guide students in the directions of understanding STEM literacy and why it is needed in our society. WORD COUNT: 124

Teaching Students to Follow Directions

Resource: "Following Directions: How do I Teach this Skill?" https://learningspecialistmaterials.blogspot.com/2011/02/following-directions-how-do-i-teach.html For this week resource blog, instead of particularly focusing literacy in a specific content course and how we can implement things in our class to improve student's literacy skills in learning, I wanted to really focus on just following directions. In any subject and any task, following directions is an important skill student need to learn and I've been noticing while tutoring and/or in classes at Hilsman Middle there are a lot of students who do not follow directions or not even read it. Automatically, many students normally just ignore the directions and go straight to the questions of the worksheets. In most cases, I do feel like their work or tests are straight forward and do not require reading the directions to do it properly, especially in math, but that is not true for everything. There are d...