~My Weekly Report and Reflection 4~

Weekly Overview

          This week we focused on a resource provided to us called gap closing.  Gap closing assists teachers in diagnosing the specific areas that students struggle in.  By doing so, this allows teachers to better differentiate learning for those students who may fall behind their peers.  The website www.gapclosing.ca provides teachers with resources for diagnostics as well as different catered intervention materials.  I really liked this resource because not only is it applicable to those students who are struggling and in need of extra assistance, but it can also be used for all students in a classroom that is at a lower development level than others.  By doing so, the teacher is able to cater his or her instruction to not only one individual, but every student in their class.  This helps to make differentiated instruction a lot easier for teachers when lesson planning.  Lastly, to assist us with our present lesson planning and for more ideas in the future, our teacher provided with the websites: http://www.mathalicious.com/ and http://www.yummymath.com/ .  Mathalicious and Yummy Math give teachers really cool ideas for ways to apply mathematical lessons to the real world.  I really like these sites because sometimes I struggle with thinking of real world applications for some math concepts, so it has proven to be very helpful during my lesson planning processes!

What was your favourite part of the week?

          Although we did not spend a lot of time dedicated to it this week, we received another resource that teachers could use as a potential warm up/start up activity.  This week, the website is www.wodb.ca .  This site includes hundreds of puzzles that vary in difficulty as well as subject matter (shapes, numbers, and graphs).  The idea of the activity is to give an explanation why one of the quadrants does not belong.  The catch is that there is at least one valid reason why each shape might not belong.  Here is an example of one of the puzzles:

Retrieved From: http://www.wodb.ca/shapes.html

> The top left rectangle might not belong because it is the only shape without four equal side lengths.

> The top right square might not belong because is the only grey shape.

> The bottom left square might not belong because it is the only shape that is resting on a vertex. 

> The bottom right pentagon might not belong because it is the only shape that has five sides.

I really love this style of question as a warm up question because it ties into a lot of the concepts we’ve discussed over the past couple of weeks.  The way that the question is asked, it alludes to an open style question.  The students can pick any of the quadrants and as long as they are able to justify their answer, they will always be correct.  In addition, it caters to the different learning styles and can therefore be considered as a form of differentiated instruction.  Students can look at how the different items look, what their technical name is, or even their mathematical purpose.  Because of this, every single student can provide an answer and an explanation, no matter how they learn or their developmental level.  That is why I love this resource for warm ups more than any other resource provided thus far.  In a subject that students hate and fear, they do not have to be afraid to give their opinion, because they will always be right – thus building confidence in students.  And without a hint of confidence, students have no chance to become invested and excited to learn mathematics.