Educational Reflections (formerly Rumblings from 52): Math test prep and next steps, Halloween talks, Myth Writing & future lessons

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Math test prep and next steps, Halloween talks, Myth Writing & future lessons

Mathematics:

It has been a very busy week and I have not had the opportunity to do some writing and reflecting.

The items in the photo are a collection of items from our prep for our upcoming Math test.

I am using Google Classroom a lot more now to communicate with the students and have detailed some notes on what is needed to be ready for the upcoming test. During the game playing (fraction based games posted on GS), I was able to work with some students and help review some concepts relating to the LCM (finding a common multiple for adding or subtracting with the same denominator) or the GCF (for reducing fractions to the lowest term).

There seem to be so many topics and possibilities for study in the Number Sense Strand. All of it is significant to understanding the other work we will do in the other strands. After this fraction unit, we will move into some short work on Order of Operations, into the realm of positive and negative numbers (Integers), and a review of decimals, percentages, and ratio. I will do my best to thread a connection among all of the things we do in Math to demonstrate how Math is indeed beautiful and has a purpose.

This video was requested by Jiya and Saya...maybe Hannah, as well:

Media Literacy:

Ms. Kramer proposed a possible question we could ask the class about Halloween costumes, in light of the current issues around what is and isn't appropriate to wear. I thought we would look at the idea of costumes being a form of media which can communicate messages.

We checked out a couple of examples of issues in the news and will continue to look at the items as we approach Halloween:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/halloween-2017-costumes-1.4351695

As I searched the Internet for this story, I came across this bizarre form of costume:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41651066

Writing: Myth

You may not be aware of this, but the writing assignment we are currently engaged in is around Myths. At this point, we are in the pre-writing stage and working on brainstorming ideas. Last week, I assigned some initial jot notes for this assignment.

For our purposes, the myth the students will create will explain some aspect of the world and connect it with a fictional story. For example, giraffes got their long necks from stretching to get food from trees. I will post the handout given out today (Wednesday) on Google Classroom.

Further lessons will help explain the process of using transition words and quotations in writing.