This post was inspired by the following posts:
Your Summer Reading List and Professional Development Meme

Here’s a list of the books I’ll be reading this summer for Professional Development on my own.

1. Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative by Ken Robinson-

2. The Passionate Teacher by Robert L. Fried

3. The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam

4. Thinking Visually by Oliver Caviglioli and Ian Harris

5. Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

6. Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design by Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe

7.Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds

I will be reading the Understanding by Design books to see how they fit into my school’s adoption of SIOP (Structured Instructon Observation Protocol) http://www.siopinstitute.net/. I will be reading Presentation Zen, Thinking Visually and The Back of the Napkin to improve my presentation and graphic design skills for the classroom.

Also during the summer I hope to experiment more with the Wii Board project to see how it can be used in my classroom in the fall.

Earlier this month I attended a workshop hosted by SDR (www.SDResources.org) called Making Math Work for Underachieving Students. This workshop was presented by Steve Leinwand

In this case underachieving students are the students that tend to get “left behind”. Their home life may be such that there is no one home to assist them and they haven’t grown up in a “math rich” environment. Here are ten strategies for making math work for underachieving students.

1. Embed the math in contexts and problems.
Which is more interesting to solve?
1. F=4(s-65)+10 Find F when S=81 or 2. The Speeding fine in Vermont is 4$ for every mile per hour over the 65 mph limit plus $10 handling fee. What would the fine be if I was pulled over at 81 mph? The context of the problem helps keep students interested. Another example would be: A Big Mac costs $2.23, how many Big Macs can you get if you have $10. vs divide 2.23 by 10. Both of these problems require division but there is more thought required for the first problem than the second.

2. Incorporate on-going cumulative review into instruction every day
Give a small mini quiz everyday reinforcing past concepts and number sense skills. Five to eight questions will provide enough practice to reinforce their learning.

3. Create a Language Rich Classroom
Just like we create word walls for language arts classes, we can create them for our math classes. These walls will help students increase their math vocabulary and learn to speak the language of math. Look at the standardized tests that use for vocabulary words that might cause trouble for your students and focus on those words. Include the language of math in classroom discussions throughout the day.

4. Use every number as a chance to build number sense and reasonableness.
Use numbers from the problems they are solving to build number sense. Ask them to list three things they can tell about a number. Ask them to put numbers in order from largest to smallest.

5. Draw pictures, create mental images, foster visualization so that numbers make sense.
Drawing pictures helps students to visualize the math concepts you are teaching. Encourage them to show fractions in different ways.

6. Build from graphs, charts and tables
This strategy works well with building number sense. Have students tell you five things about the graph they see. Have them try to guess where the data comes from

7. Tie the Math to How big? how much, how far?
Measurement skills are often weak skills for students of all ages as they are generally left to cover at the end of the year. By including these skills in every lesson they have a greater opportunity to improve them.

8. Adapt what we know from Reading. Incorporate literal, inferential, and evaluative comprehension to develop stronger neural connections.
Ask questions to help your students make sense of the problem they are solving. Questions such as: How did you get that answer? Why? Can you explain? Convince me? Is it reasonable? all help to increase their understanding. Encourage different approaches to solving problems.

9. Omit what is no longer important.
Look through your standardized testing materials and see which benchmarks/standards count the most and focus on those concepts.

10. Make questions such as: why, how do you know, can you explain, convince me as classroom mantras.
Asking questions such as those listed above helps students to clarify their understanding of the concept being taught. Its also good to ask them to give multiple answers. Asking follow up questions such as: Can you tell me another way? How else do you know this is true? will help all students’ understanding. These questions can also be used in other subjects to extend your students thinking.

This is not my usual style of writing for this blog. The Red Wings are my favorite hockey team and some co-workers were saying that they weren’t going to sweep the Avalanche. Since they had nothing to lose (their teams didn’t make the playoffs) I wrote and emailed this little press release celebrating the Wings win. Enjoy!

Press Release

Denver, Colorado

Colorado Avalanche to join the Buffalo-Edmonton Golf Tour.

After being swept from the playoffs by the Detroit Red Wings last night, the Avalanche announced plans to join the Buffalo-Edmonton Golf Tour. Although Edmonton and Buffalo have been playing golf for weeks, its expected the Colorado franchise will have no problem catching up.

“We’re looking to duplicate the success Buffalo has had on the golf tour in recent years”, an unnamed Avalanche team member said.

“Without a goalie, it should be an easy task to put the ball in the hole,” another player added.

When asked to comment on the golf tour Mike Babcock declined saying,” None of our players have had much experience in playing on that tour as it starts much before our season is usually over. Our focus continues to be winning our tenth Stanley Cup.”

The Chicago Blackhawk franchise is the perennial favorite to capture Lord Stanley’s Other Cup trophy.