Education 325 Blog

Hey Jess! Crazy to think that this is our last blog week! I hope you're having a good week and not too overloaded with end-of-semester work! Textbook 1. Explain what it means to measure something. Does your explanation work equally well for length, area, weight, volume, and time? It was a bit tricky to find a definition for measuring that fit all of those terms, but honestly a broad definition works well for this, and it can be further elaborated based on what type of measurement is needed from there. Measuring somethings means to compare an object to a specific unit, which is very similar to what the book says. Measuring something means to describe it based on a specific unit, and that broadly applies to all areas.  2. A general instruction plan for measurement has three steps. Explain how the type of activity used at each step accomplishes the instructional goal. The first step is to make comparisons. In the book, the students were comparing items based on one attrib...

Hey Jess! I hope you're having a great week! Measurement Misconceptions Why do you think the students are having difficulty? The students are not using the ruler properly causing confusion. They are not realizing that the ruler shows different units of measurement. What misunderstandings are they demonstrating? While they understood where to place the ruler to begin measuring, they were thrown off by different lines leading to different units of measurement. Madison wanted to start at zero rather than one. The students seem to be misunderstanding the general layout of a ruler and could benefit from a review of what everything on the ruler means. As teachers, it is easy to assume that students know these things, but we need to be careful to look out for small, simple misunderstandings like this. Have you witnessed any students experiencing some of these same difficulties? Unfortunately I have not observed any units involving measurement in my field work. What types of activ...

Hey Jess! Hope you're having a great week! Coordinate Grids Here is a list of the sites I explored: http://www.math.com/school/subject3/practice/S3U1L2/S3U1L2Pract.html This site works well, but I do not really see a need for its use in the classroom, as this activity could be done just as easily on paper. While the school I am in right now provides laptops for all of the students, not all schools do that, so this may be a good site to assign review homework on, but it isn't necessary. It is good practice at identifying coordinates, but there is nothing really added by using technology with this activity as the kids are just typing the letter they find. I would possibly use this in a class, but I would not say it is really necessary to complete these types of activities. http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/GeneralCoordinates/ This one was very similar to the one above, but it was an actual interactive game, so there was more use of the technological portion. ...

Hey Jess! I hope you had a great Easter weekend! Pentomino Activities The activities in this PowerPoint did not really cause me any frustration, I found them interesting and enjoyed them! It was a great review of symmetry and the different types of symmetry. I found a site titled Super Teacher Worksheets (superteacherworksheets.com) that offered a wide variety of activities, worksheets, and lessons for working with pentominoes and tessellation! Most of what I found was for an 8th grade curriculum, so it would not really apply to the 5th grade class I am teaching in, but some of it can be simplified to fit younger grades. For younger grades just starting out, I found a ton of worksheets and activities similar to the one below. The students have to play around with the shapes to make it fit into the animal or puzzle provided. This is a great and fun way to introduce these topics and I would definitely use this in my classroom! Would you use an activity like this? Does it seem like ...