I attended the MACUL conference with other Secondary MAC interns on Friday 3/20. I'm so glad I have my colleagues' company and support at the conference. It was a lot more enjoyable and informative to go to sessions with people I can trust to discuss the presentations.
The best presentation I found most helpful was titled "Leveraging Technology to Foster Communication, writing, and Collaboration in Mathematics". I was intrigued by this session because the idea of incorporating communication and writing into a math classroom seemed daunting, and any insight into this topic would be helpful for me. The session was lead by two experienced math teachers who, after seeing them present, are obviously experienced, and energetic teachers.Their presentation was well-organized, engaging, and practical.
The teachers engaged us by having the audience form pairs, with one person facing the screen and one with their back to the screen. First round, they put 4 math words on the screen. The person facing the screen had to describe to their partner the words, without actually saying any part of the word. We also could not use our hands to help us describe the words. In the second round, the partners switch roles, and now they put a picture on the screen. The person seeing the screen will describe it to the other person, who has to draw it. The act of describing these words and the image required us to use many other math concepts and words, leading to a discussion between students full of mathematical vocabulary. These activities could be modified slightly to make them easier or harder, such as allowing the partner to see each others drawing and give feedback. I like this activity because it is a way to give students practice using the mathematical vocabulary in their own way. I could also facilitate a discussion afterwards to discuss the different ways the students described things, and what words came up during the discussion.
Another activity that they showed us in this session is the "tic-tac-toe" vocabulary activity. In this activity, the teacher puts up the tic-tac-toe board, with math words that the teacher wants the students to use. Then the students are instructed to choose a row of three words that the students then have to put into one sentence. I can see myself using this activity to scaffold the writing of a summary by having them choose two sets of words that they have to incorporate into at least 2 sentences. My students currently struggle with writing summaries. By having a few words that they have to incorporate into a sentence will have them think of how they are related (or not) to construct a sentence.
Finally, the resource that I found helpful is nearpod.com, which works for any device. The teacher who uses this tool has an ipad available for each student to use. Nearpod allows students to write or draw things free hand, for which an ipad is a perfect fit. A teacher can ask students a verbal question, or put a question on the board, after which students answer it on the ipad and hit "submit". When the students submit their answers, the teacher can see all the answers with the students' name. Then the teacher can choose to share one of the answers anonymously, where the answer shows up on the students' devices to examine for a classroom discussion. Although not every classroom has a device available for each student to use, the idea is still applicable. In my own classroom, I can have students answer a question on index cards to be submitted. Then I can choose an answer to share by writing it on the board, or covering the name and using a document camera.
I love all these ideas, and I can see myself starting to use these ideas right now. Being in the presence of so many other educators who are all open to collaboration was a great experience, especially that I got to experience it with my friends and colleagues.
Ha! That's awesome. Usually when I sit in a math classroom, we do problems all day. It's refreshing to see that there are other options aside from writing math equations and solving stuff class after class, especially when it gets to high level math classes at the high school level. When I got to calc, we literally had practice problems all class hour and assigned for each one of our homework assignments.
ReplyDeleteI think it's also a good idea you described to get students to learn their math vocab, rather than just using it over and over. With the challenge of describing it to someone else (without using hands!), students are really challenged to come up with alternate, yet clear, definitions of what the words are. Thanks for sharing!
It's so great that you and Subha got to attend this session, Tahani. I was saying in my response to Subha's posting that it teachers like your presenters who ignore the artificial boundaries that say writing happens in language arts, not math classrooms, are the best kinds of educators to meet and to learn from. I saw that they shared their powerpoint with you, and I strongly encourage you to keep in touch with them. To come away from a conference with some new people to add to add to your professional learning network is a great thing!
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