Week+3+Reflections

=Week 3 Reflections = =Lesson 5 - Using Manipulatives =

Would you use manipulatives? Why or why not? Which ones do you like?

I feel that manipulatives are a fantastic visual aid to help all students. When learning a new concept or just brushing up on a past lesson, why not allow students to physically and visually work out a problem with an aid. When I was a student in senior public and secondary school, we did not actually have these form of aids in our classroom. As a result, I guess you could say I was lucky, as I understood how math had been taught to our class, and thoroughly enjoyed the subject. However, with some of my friends, they struggled and wanted to give up, and I would not let them as this would be a career killer. So, I began to peer-teach them whenever we had time, be it on the bus heading out to one of our sports events or during lunch and/or on a spare. I would not give up on my girlfriends, as I knew it would just be a matter of time before they grasped the concept! If my friends and I only knew about manipulatives... how much time we would have saved.

As a future teacher, I am going to make a quick reference sheet for all of my students in the class. This reference will incorporate the internet with various math help you can find online. In order to organize the internet snippets, I am going to use delicious. This way, I will not have to find a quick resource if the current internet connection has been moved or deleted off the web and it will be easier to maintain. I am going to create worksheets that reflect the various levels of math per grade, with respect to the manipulative present in each class. This will then help as a guide how to effectively use the manipulatives for students who need a refresher.

My favourite manipulatives are the blue and red chips, to help the students out with a negative and positive integer. Also, during graphing, to be able to write out an equa

=Lesson 6 - Teaching Strategy (Using Technology, Part 1) =

How do you think technology should be used when you teach?

When you implement technology into your teaching plan, you are preparing the students for real-life experiences. Every possible career combination, uses a computer, and/or phone for three main purposes being: complex calculations, management of massive inventories and organization of work for large numbers of individuals and groups. Entering a classroom and having the use of a smartboard to be hooked up to your laptop and or the ability to rent out a computer lab for a portion of your mathematics class, technology should be used.

In today's lesson, we had the opportunity to work with clickers individually on our laptops. I personally, like the idea of a clicker to use in my classroom for a quick review/ scenario of how the students are comprehending the current topic. By not using this method for any form of test or quiz, you are able to narrow down with the overall majoirty how the class is doing. By making quick questions up in powerpoint, you can prepare your CPS software for how large your group is. Every student can privately, give their opinion without any of their peers noting that they may be struggling. If the results demonstrate, lack of understanding this is the best que I can obtain that as a class we need to take a further look into this topic!