My first weeks at Baldwin County have been as expected. Lunch room confusion, kids thinking I'm a student, and the usual classroom struggles for a few examples. However, I am struggling most with how to introduce literacy situations in my classroom. One of the causes of my struggles is that we are not working out of the book. My host teacher works with her own lesson plans that coincide with the book, yet she does not ask the students to open them during class. I like the idea of exploring reading issues of word problems. However, I have yet to encounter a word problem. Thus, so far I have only introduced new note writing techniques in my classroom. Furthermore, I have introduced the techniques only to a small group of students. I plan to write about this for my first literacy exploration so I will not go into grave detail here.
The literacy future of my class does look promising.I have explained my inquiry research project to my teacher and she liked the idea and gave me some pointers. I plan to still incorporate a mathematician historical project in order to further develop content literacy. Hopefully my students will react well to this project and will become more engaged after they understand the origins of the mathematical facts that they constantly take for granted.
My teacher has been very supportive and intends to help me incorporate all of my literacy techniques. Any suggestions about literacy engagement projects that were not outlined in the book would be appreciated.
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Don't worry Mikey, I get mistaken for a student as well. If it weren't for the coffee travel mug I carry around and my name tag, they would never figure it out!
ReplyDeleteAs an English teacher, I am more and more sympathetic toward Math/Science teachers, for whom incorporating literacy into the classroom is not an easy task. I have found it a struggle to do it even in my AP Lit & 9th grade classes. I think over time, you will figure out better ways to do it. This may be a cop-out solution, but have you tried searching online for ideas?
I'm glad it has gone well for you!
In a suggestion for a literacy project, Chante mentioned teaching the students' to learn to read their math book. If you just went over the sections of the book one day, then I think the students would have a easier time knowing how to read the book, ex. glossary. Most students probably don't know that there is a glossary in the back of a math book. Going over the index would also be a helpful, so they would know where to find certain topics in their book. I think that another good idea would be to find articles that talk about people who use math daily in their jobs ex. contractors, architects, accountants, etc.
ReplyDelete"Lunch room confusion"..... yep, sums up my experience with the lunch room at high school when i was a student---so loud! But yes, I can see how it would be difficult introducing literacy situations in a math classroom. Personally I find the history of math and mathematicians fascinating...maybe you could do something with that? But also, I like the suggestion mentioned above about teaching the students to learn to thoroughly read their math books. That would definitely come in handy for math classes in their future.
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