I've been thinking a lot about how I'll redo my classroom when I return in a few years (taking a break now to raise the babies). In one of my last classes in graduate school (just got my Masters'! woo!) I learned A TON about researched-based principles of multimedia learning (so cool!). I was also told to read Mindset by Dweck in a methods course, and learned about some great ways to encourage and help students develop their mathematical mindset. Two big ideas from the readings that really stuck out to me were:
This got me thinking about how I do (1) warm-ups and (2) testing. Since pre-knowledge is so important, and from seeing the wonderful light-bulbs go off in the past, I imagine I will incorporate more "My Favorite No" before a lesson, which is a fantastic way to celebrate mistakes, and gauge how much my students remember about a topic before I build on their understanding. And since written feedback needs to always be incorporated more in my lessons, I decided I'm doing two new things: One new idea I have is MATH JOURNALS! There is just NEVER enough time in the day to talk with every student about how they're doing or feeling or thinking about math, so I thought at least a 5-10 minute prompt every other day could really get me connecting more with them, and showing them more feedback from me. And the second new idea I have that's not fully developed yet is that instead of doing 1 day of review and 1 day of testing, we switch it up and do 1 day of testing and 1 day of reflection. I'll have to develop this further, read about other teachers who've tried something similar, then draw up my own conclusions. I just strongly feel we as educators need to show more of a compassionate side to education, a "I REALLY want you to learn this, so let's keep thinking about improvement rather than ignoring it and moving on." It just feels so liberating to break free from this little teaching box I imagined myself into! Until next time.
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AuthorTracy Conte is a high school math teacher in Raleigh, NC. Archives
November 2019
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