In the end...

The reading skills students need will vary by the subject. Not only will I need to teach the content, I also need to teach students the literacy skills they need to succeed in the subject. Before this semester, I never considered that my students wouldn't come to me with those skills. For many reasons, my students might not be reading on the level that our textbook or Georgia Milestones Tests will require. I have many strategies to help my students improve their reading and comprehension so that they can understand the content as well. It is a shame that some students might be knowledgeable in a content area but their grades don't reflect it because they are struggling readers. I enjoyed the Strategy Lessons and I now have a large variety of fun ways to help students make sense of the text. I am glad I bought this book and have a list of different activities on pages 90 and 91 that I can go to whenever our class needs something to regain the interest of my students.

Literacy is not just reading though. There are many other aspects to literacy that I may not have included in the definition before this class like writing or understanding videos and spoken language. Most importantly, literacy involves thinking strategies that are listed on page 30 and I will probably make a list of this chart for my classroom and maybe even for my students.

I always want to be the best teacher I can be and I want to try to teach students the important things even if it doesn't always relate to my content area. Anything I teach them that can be applied to their other classes or their daily lives will be a double win in my book. Literacy is so important and the ability to read is something even I take for granted. Any way that I can teach a skill that students use everyday is something I will strive for. I can't wait to research other strategies and read articles with more advice for teaching content literacy. I found an article that was specific to math that I would love to incorporate into my future classroom here: http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/VM/0201-sep2012/VM0201Why.pdf
Another article I found with other great ideas is found here:
https://education.ucf.edu/mirc/docs/Disciplinary-literacy-strategies-in-content-area-classes2015.pdf

Chasing Vermeer is one of the only books I can remember reading that I actually enjoyed. I would love to have a book club and a class library with books that relate to math. I was inspired by our Literature Circle and I found a short list of math book titles I would like to include here:
http://www.scholastic.com/parents/blogs/scholastic-parents-learning-toolkit/math-literature-creating-math-library-home
Other websites for putting together a math library are found here:
https://www.booksource.com/Departments/Booksource/Grades-6-8.aspx?CategoryBvin=cf64badc-dc9f-4e35-a005-85d2e050505d&SubCategoryBvin=dba7d38d-4f84-4409-bfa3-31633ad4fbfc
and here:
http://guides.library.duq.edu/CurriculumCenter/mathliterature
It was interesting to read this from an educator and student perspective, but overall I enjoyed every bit of the book and our activities with it. I was so nervous to create a podcast, but that ended up being a great experience too.

I guess all good things must come to an end, and I will really miss this class.
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Chasing Vermeer Podcast

Chasing Vermeer was such a cool book to read and had so many math references that I found really exciting. I enjoyed working with Morgan Cocca and Lainna Loving in our literature circles.

Podcasts instead of Textbooks?!?!

I found the article to be interesting at first, and then I was appalled. The research study was a little concerning, because when someone takes on the challenge of learning a new language, they should be hearing it in addition to reading it. I thought that if this study had been conducted with the same results for any other content class I would be willing to give it a shot, but they were learning a language. I'm also concerned that podcasts are just like every website on the internet, and their quality varies greatly. If I wanted to experiment with this method myself, I would have to create my own or spend some time finding grade appropriate and factual podcasts. For there to be no difference between student outcomes in classes that use podcasts or textbooks, I'm not convinced I would want to teach math using podcasts. I do want to keep students engaged and will always try to use interesting teaching resources like videos, so I could find a place for a couple podcasts. I'm still very old-fashioned and really love textbooks, so it's going to take a lot more to convince me on this one.

Math in Art

I have already thought about creating a career unit in my math class to highlight all the ways adults use math in their jobs. Visiting the museum was a fun trip, because it got me thinking about all the way artists use math. In the Belleek Porcelain exhibit, I thought about how much detail went into sculpting the porcelain, but also how much precision must go into first creating the dough. This would be a great way to talk about ratios, fractions, and percentages. The ingredients work together and it is important to keep the ingredients in the right proportions. If too much liquid is added, the dough will not mold well or might not ever dry. If the dough is too dry, it might be too hard to shape. Doubling or tripling the recipe will result in different amounts of each ingredient, but again they need to be kept in the same proportion and increased by the same percentage. My class could also talk about how long it will take items to dry and if the time differs based on item size, temperature, or altitude. This could also end up being a fun project for students if this lesson was around a holiday. Once they created the recipe of a desired size, they could actually make porcelain ornaments for Christmas or other figurines for other holidays. While the porcelain collection in the Georgia Museum of Art was mostly white, there could be other math lessons in colored porcelain or painting the figures. Paint is also made with certain ingredients in a specific recipe so that the liquid dries with the particular characteristics. Incorporating art with something they could actually see and create would be a fun project for any aspiring artists being forced to take math in middle school.

Writing in Mathematics

Writing is just as important a component of reading when it comes to literacy. I've noticed throughout this semester with my own assignments that writing can be an important part of math class. Getting them started with writing assignments earlier will be beneficial to the students in their math class and to their overall literacy. While a math journal was already mentioned in a blog, I've thought about other assignments that could require writing. In our cohort's math classes this semester, we've been required to do a lot of writing assignments. Since we are in a teaching program, our homework is designed to have us thinking about how we would explain these concepts to students. There is a great advantage to being able to explain something in order to better understand it. An interesting article about this idea is found here: https://www.livescience.com/34000-explaining-helps-understand.html . I would like to have students in my class explain the steps, in writing, for certain problems for homework. One website I found about writing in math is here: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/four-tips-writing-math-classroom-heather-wolpert-gawron . This would be incredibly different from anything I ever did in middle school math classes but have been expected to do a lot of in college. This could be very informal and I would just have them write about problems the way they would tell the student next to them having trouble. Kids can usually speak and explain well, so all they would need to do is put their ideas onto paper.

Text Set Brainstorming

Math was always my favorite subject. I could pick out patterns and I made connections to other concepts that I understood. As I've been working through this semester in my math classes and online tutoring, I've realized other students are not as lucky. I don't remember my teachers ever explicitly saying how different concepts were related to each other, and I can imagine this is something that is still overlooked and underestimated. It's a shame because students may understand one topic and then not be able to apply those same procedures to another concept that looks slightly different. One of my main goals as a math teacher will be to bridge these gaps in knowledge and help students apply them to many different types of problems. The brightest students who have enjoyed math typically find algebra and the introduction of letters into math equations to be their downfall. I think I would like to focus on algebraic equations and graphs for my text set. One article I have already found relating to this topic is found here: https://sciencing.com/linear-equations-used-everyday-life-6022370.html
These problems will only get worse for students when they reach quadratic equations and calculus. Helping students see what is actually going on is this topic and why it is useful can be one way to keep students interested and achieving in math.

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Tweet the Text Reflection Post

I enjoyed teaching our class about "Tweet the Text." I had my reservations about this method before Hannah and I began working on our lesson because I am very old-fashioned in my pedagogical thinking. The wide use of technology in classrooms is so crazy to me, but I think I'm coming around. During Hannah's and my collaboration, I realized the versatility of this strategy and was excited to share it with our class. I think our class's participation went well during our activity, and I think Hannah and I worked well together. During the presentation, I was afraid I was talking too fast so I tried to slow it down. I was also worried about being boring and reading straight from the slides so I was also trying hard to paraphrase without leaving out important details. Delivering lectures and being able to think on the spot are things that I need to work on,  so I am grateful for this opportunity. I also realize that I wasn't clear enough in directions on what I was looking for during our "Tweet the Text" activity, but I've learned from my mistake and won't overlook a detail like that again. Overall, I think the lesson went well, and I've definitely learned how much preparation will go into each lesson I teach my future class.

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