Blog Post # 16 - Final Reflection

Blog Post #5 - Part B

My PLN has not grown too much since I first created it. I have kept in contact with my personal teaching friends, started following other teachers and teacher assisting sites on twitter and youtube, and continued to use my Pinterest page to draw inspiration. I have also found many teachers blogs through our C4T assignments that I am continuing to follow. A piece that I cannot wait to add to my PLN as a teacher is one that I discovered while working on Blog Post #13 called Schoology. Using this service, I will be able to glean knowledge from teachers all over the country who also use it. We can compare lesson plans, talk about classroom improvements, and even ask for help. I think it will be a great asset to my classroom, and best of all - it's free!

C4T #4 - Shireen Dadmehr

My fourth C4T is on the blog of Shireen Dadmehr. Her blog is called Math Teacher Mambo, and I commented on a post titled Fraction Remix.... Mrs. Dadmehr is a high school math teacher from Texas. In her Fraction Remix post, she recounts a time when a student in her precalculus class couldn't remember the rules for dividing fractions. Fractions seem to scare everyone! Instead of quickly telling the student to "flip and multiply" or "drop, change, and flip," she decided to review fractions with her entire class and explain to them why the "flip and multiply" method works. To me, this was genius. Kids are always looking for the quick answer, but it is so much more beneficial to teach them "why" in order for them to gain a true understanding of the concepts. I know that I am a little strange because I'm passionate about math, but this is the type of understanding that I want to give to my students. I think that students could benefit from having a true understanding of the basics as they move on to more complicated concepts in high school. As an elementary teacher, I hope that I can truly prepare my students for their futures in math, and maybe I can help to mold some more crazy people who love math like I do.

Mrs. Dadmehr's notes from her review lesson.

Next, I commented on Mrs. Dadmehr's post titled Hello (mid) November. In this post, she talks about some changes she has made to her classroom to help improve the experience for her students. One of the things I really liked was she was noticing her students were struggling with a specific concept, so she arranged mandatory meeting times. She then posted the available time slots and allowed students to sign up for a convenient time. In these sessions, she was able to pick the brains of her students to find out what was causing their problem. Now, Mrs. Dadmehr is a high school math teacher, so I have had to somewhat alter this thinking to make it work in an elementary classroom. I think it would be  most beneficial in the areas of math and reading. However, I can't imagine posting a sign up sheet for kindergarteners to choose a convenient time to meet. My solution was to maybe pull them out of centers or recess for just a few minutes to go over areas they are struggling in. Another alternative is to get the parents involved and see if they can bring them to school a little early for extra help. 

Finally, I commented on a post titled Sine Graphs and desmos.com. This is PBL at its finest. Even though I love math, I can honestly say that Calculus kicked my butt. If only I had a teacher like Mrs. Dadmehr to show me real world applications for what I was learning. Students were to pick any city in the world and, for homework, research and return with weather data for a 12 month period in their chosen city. They used desmos.com to enter and save their weather data. Next, they had to draw a generic sine graph, and the teacher walked them through finding an equation to satisfy made-up data. Individually, they were to input their own data pertaining to their city and then find an equation to satisfy it. In this way they were working backwards to demonstrate competency.