-"First Impressions" about the standards:
My first impression when looking at the standards was that the wording was somewhat confusing to me. I feel like there was a lot of unnecessary wording. When looking at the standards I feel like they were missing important qualities and that the word usage was too much and not to the point. I also was surprised at what was expected from the children at each grade level. I feel like the standards have been raised quite a bit from what I remember learning in school.
-How do concepts progress through the grades?
The concepts progress through the grades by working as a building block method. What a student was to learn in kindergarten in geometry would be elaborated on more in first grade, second grade, and so on. In geometry in kindergarten students are learning how to identify shapes and in first grade they start being able to reason with the shapes. The higher the grade level goes the more intricate each part of the subject of math becomes.-How do concepts change and increase in rigor and complexity for the students?
As expected, as the grade gets higher so does the level of complexity and rigor involved for each grade level. Students learn their basic math skills in kindergarten and those same skills are built upon and added to throughout their years in school.
-Common Core and NCTM Standards:
- Does the common core standards align with what the NCTM states students should be able to know and do within the different grade level bands?
- When looking at the common core standards and the NCTM I would have to say that they align pretty well with each other. As stated on the module checklist a big difference visually would be that the NCTM is structured in grade level bands instead of individual grade levels. The common core standards seemed to be written in a little more detailed way but then again I do think (as I mentioned earlier) the common core can be to wordy.
- Give examples of which standards align as well as examples of what is missing from the Common Core but is emphasized in the NCTM standards and vice versa:
- In the NCTM students were to: Discuss events related to students’ experiences as likely or unlikely and using personal experience and the terms likely and unlikely is not something that I saw used in the Common Core.
- In first grade common core standards want the students to be able to sort data in up to three categories. In the NCTM it said that data should be sorted into categories but it does not give the number of categories students should be able to do.
- Common Core in Kindergarten says: "classify objects into given categories" and NCTM says: "sort and classify objects according to their attributes and organize data about the objects". These two seemed to align to me. I understand not word for word but I saw them as being pretty similar.
Curriculum Resources:
I chose to do: "Data Day: Standing Jumps and Arm Spans" for grade 2.
In this lesson children measure the length of a standing long jump in centimeters and the length of an arm span in inches.
-What mathematical ideas would you want your students to work through?
The mathematical idea I would want my students to work through would be:
- Comparing inches and centimeters
- Collecting data
- Compare numbers and record data
- Measuring distances and lengths to the nearest inch or centimeter
To bring the mathematical ideas out during this lesson I would need to make sure:
- Students knew what inches and centimeters were
- Students knew how to measure both inches and centimeters
- Students knew how to collect data
- Make data collection fun for them (such as measuring arm spans)
- Students understood the numbers that they were comparing
- Students knew how to round numbers to the nearest inch or centimeter
- A way to make this lesson more accessible or easier for the students would be to let them write down the exact number that their distances was instead of having the students to round their numbers to the nearest centimeter or inch.
- A way to make this lesson more challenging for the students would be to have students to find 3 objects in the classroom that are closely related to the distances that they have recorded in their journals.
- Do you think your line judge is judging fair?
- Who has the longest distances on arm span?
- Why do we use inches for arm span instead of centimeters?
- Which form of measurement would we use when judging how wide the classroom is?
In listening to the students and observing them it allows for the teacher to know if the students understand how to use centimeters and inches as well as to know if they are able to collect, analyze, and compare data.
-How do the concepts taught in this lesson align to the common core?
The common core in grade 2 says that students will "generate measurement data by measuring lengths of several objects to the nearest whole number..." which is what is going on in this in this lesson. This activity in my opinion aligns very well with this standard from the Common Core.
Box Plots:
-Three Questions to ask the class:
1. Which class has the highest number of trash collected by only one student?
Our class because our highest outlier is past 110 and theirs is just past 90.
2. Which class appears to have collected the most trash? How did you get your answer?
Our class seems to have collected the most trash because the median of our class is higher than the German class and the majority the majority of our data falls past 70 where theirs stops beside for the outlying number.
3. Do you believe that this data collection is fair being that the German class is based off of 42 students and ours is based off of 18?
(This would be an opinion question but I am going to give my answer)
I do not believe this study could be considered completely accurate because there is such a drastic difference in the number of students used in each set. If the number of students in our class was around 30-42 I would think that we could get a better understanding from this study.
I'm glad you thought that the wording of the common core is somewhat confusing as well. It does not really lay out of what they are really asking. The website below is a really good website to use. It explains the standards better and gives you activities for each standard and grade level.Do you know any other websites like this? Or resources in general?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.k-5mathteachingresources.com/
I also agree standards have defiantly been raised since I was in school. I did got to a private school for elementary school, but we still learned the same things the public schools were learning in each grade level.
I am also surprised to see that you thought the NCTM and Common Core aligned very closely. I thought they aligned as well, however I felt NCTM had the same standards for three grade levels that Common Core only had for one. Do you think this is wrong of me to think? Am I missing something?
In your lesson it is important for students to know the difference between inches and centimeters and how to measure in both. They would also need to know when it is best to use each. How would you make sure students understood the difference between each? Which would you teach first?
I liked how you modified the lessons in this. As a special education major, I see the importance of modifying lessons because not all students are on the same academic level. Sometimes they are entitled by their IEP for these modifications, so it is important for general education teachers to see the importance of modifications. Are you comfortable with modifying lessons for your students if they have learning disabilities in your class?
How would you help your students better understand certain concepts that are in the lesson if you saw they were not understanding them when you were observing the students work?
Have a great week!
Thank you for the resource. I have a whole database of resources that I have build throughout school I would be glad to share with you at the end of the year when it is complete. Since you went to private school do you want to teach public or private schools? No I think you are correct. When I said that Common Core and NCTM aligned I meant they contained a lot of the same thing but yes NCTM did stretch over a group of grade levels. To make sure my students understood the difference between inches and centimeters I would show them on a ruler or yard stick and then give them classroom examples of things that could be measured with both. I believe I would teach centimeters first to show that they make up inches (I hope I said that right). I am comfortable with modifying lessons for learning disabilities and I feel it is a must. I believe as a teacher that is part of our job. When working with my students I would like to look to see where they were having their difficulties at and then go from there to decide how to modify. Each lesson would probably be different. How about you?
ReplyDeleteI would not mind teaching in a private school at home if I were to get a job in the Catholic School system I went to. The only thing is they do not really offer special education, and that is what I would like to teach. Also, the pay is not as good.
ReplyDeleteI also have some math resources from my direct instruction math class last semester. This is where I found that resource. I was just curious to see if there were any others I had not heard of.
I think how you would teach centimeters and inches is great! I think I would teach centimeters first as well for the same reason. They are a smaller unit and make up the larger one.
I would do the same thing. Each student is going to have different difficulties. Sometimes students are strong in reading but not math and vice versa so they do not need modifications in one or the other. I agree that it depends on the subject, but also sometimes students are granted the right to doing half the problems depending on what kind of questions the teacher is asking.
I didn't even think about there not being much special education in private school. I wonder why that is? Maybe at the end of the semester we will have plenty of resources that we can share with one another...that would be awesome! I have seen students only having to do half the questions....saw it today with one of my autistic students actually. Thank you for your feedback :)
ReplyDeleteThe reason special education is not really found in private schools is because under IDEA (which is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) students are granted six rights. One of these rights is the right to a free, appropriate, public education. Part of the money we pay in taxes for the schools go towards students having a public education and getting the services they need. In a private school, the government is not funding the school so special ed is not seen as much. Recently I have looked into job openings in the catholic school system at home and there was special education. At least for Mecklenburg Area Catholic Schools, it is starting to be seen at the high school level and one elementary school, but this is not common and was not there when I was in the catholic school system.
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