Week 6: Summing it all up

This week our Webinars took over class, so I thought I would take this week's post to sum up my observations and reflect upon the presentations this week. But first of all, congrats to us for another semester down!

Just one more left.....

We began the presentations with implementing technology in the classroom. We went through the app "Explain Everything." I found this app to have incredible potential in the classroom, especially the way Group A presented their activity. We were given a handout of questions to answer through the app such as "what is a square root?" and kept adding new slides for each question, where we could draw and record ourselves explaining our process. I could see this being done in the classroom, or even, as suggested, the teacher using the app to post additional help for concepts. This type of app offers redefinition in the classroom. Teachers can use this to their benefit to keep track of student understanding. This also gives students a chance to prove their understanding in a new multimodal way. 

Our next presentation focused on teaching strategies with visual tools/aids. What I thought was an important feature this group honed in on was how visualization can help to improve student's understanding in math. A concept we watched Jo Boaler comment on in Lesson 5b, which emphasized that visualization (drawings, representations) help to enhance the way we understand ideas and retain ideas. Furthermore, Group B's implementation of the book Counting On Frank not only highlights the resources available in the IRC, but was an excellent way to make math applicable in new contexts. By engaging the class in a story and presenting new questions along the way, students will become invested in the problem, because they are invested in the book.

Clement, Rod. Counting on Frank.
Retrieved from: https://www.amazon.ca/Counting-Frank-Rod-Clement/dp/0836803582

Group C focused on Financial Literacy, it was very practical to go through other documents to find connections of how to directly relate financial literacy in other topics. This is a great way to make math cross curricular as well in some instances. For example, my partner and I made connections to the effects of smoking in grade four. Financial Literacy can be integrated by investigating the financial implications of being a smoker. You could ask questions such as "If someone smokes 2 packs a day worth $11.00 a pack, how much many are they spending a week, a year, over 5 years?" "If minimum wage is $11.40 an hour, how much of someone's work pay in a month goes into their amount of cigarettes bought in a month?" "What other items are of equal value and could be a better choice for your money?"

Group D discussed Differentiated Instruction and strategies for differentiating content, process, product and learning environment for students. Allowing students to have a lot of choice in the classroom is important, while also making sure to invest a lot of time in growth mindset, so that students are able to self-regulate and make the choices appropriate to them.

And the last group discussed how to implement technology in math and provided multiple apps and websites to explore that would be useful for students and teachers.

What I found common about the Webinar topics is that this information sets us up for 21st century learning. One of the articles from this week's reading, 21st Century Learning, 20th Century Learning by Zoe Branigan-Pipe, speaks towards how we as teaching professionals can better connect the concepts and practices of 21st century learning into our environment. She states, "In almost every country that values literacy for all its citizens, recognition has grown that students learn in different ways and at different paces, and as information and tools have become more accessible and equitable, we welcome and support a variety of media and strategies." As prospective teachers learning in the context of 21st century teaching practices we are at an advantage that we are able to delve into topics such as these, synthesize the information, and share with our peers. The purpose of the Webinar is to do exactly what Branigan-Pipe asks us in her article: How are we making connections between the concepts of 21st century learning to the classroom?

Resources:

Branigan-Pipe, Zoe. (2016) 21st Century Learning, 20th Century Learning. Education Canada. Retrieved from: http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/21st-century-learning-20th-century-classroom