Tuesday, April 19, 2011

NCTM - More day 1

I feel like I should confess that I am a session hopper. I have a very hard time sitting in a session for the entire time. So many times there are multiple sessions at the same time I want to see. So yeah... I left early on this one...

Connecting and Communicating in Math Class Using Graphic Organizers
Carol A. Hynes


Better utilizing graphic organizers is something I'd like to work on next year so I thought this session might give me some ideas. As part of the introduction, Carol talked about the power of using graphic organizers when adopted school-wide or district-wide.

Some of the graphic organizers she shared were
Links (rule of 4)
Webs
Sorts
Splashes

You can find numerous examples here. You can download the zip file at the bottom of the page.


Monday, April 18, 2011

NCTM Day 1 - Do you see what I see?

Do You See What I See?
3-D Reasoning, 2-D Students
Peg Cagle

This session focused on how students today are different. Peg Cagle spent the majority of the session demonstrating the differences in play for students today.

Play was different
mechanical vs. electronic
do-it-yourself vs. pre-made
nature of public playgrounds

She talked about each of these in more detail.

I was hoping to walk away with the so what do I do to help students and toward the end of the session she gave these suggestions:

  • encourage physical activity (team sports to tree climbing)
  • introduce 2-d and 3-d dissection puzzles
  • full, pour, estimate, measure as much as you can (figure it out - which holds more?)
  • play with string (make knots, shapes, loops)
  • build stuff
At one point she had us look at paper folding and all the questions you could ask students.

She wonders if memory is stored in a geometric construct how students lack of experience with spatial reasoning might influence memory access.