Top 8 Strategy - Home Decor

The following are screenshots from Math in Daily Life, a website dedicated to advance excellent teaching in American schools.

http://www.learner.org

Math in Daily Life - Home Decorating

http://www.learner.org/interactives/dailymath/decorating.html

Inference Strategies

• CUB strategy:
• Students will circle all key numbers, Underline keywords and Box the question
• Conversion Strategy:
• Students will create a table labeled with each unit measurement.  In each column, the students will insert a measurement when they read it, then use the convert column to convert the measurement to either inches or feet

• Finding the dimensions of their home (estimations)
• Converting feet to inches and inches to feet from room to room
• when purchasing accessories and furniture, students would take those dimensions away from the area of the particular room
• The area of each room will be calculated, but the students need to know the area formula for both a square and rectangle

Instructions

Students will some day decorate their apartments and/or homes with accessories and furniture.  They need to be able to use measurements wisely to accurately have space to maneuver.  The students will get direct instruction on finding measurements using the area formula and conversion tools.  We would use multiple home accessories like rugs, sofas and small furnitures to to decorate their rooms.  After multiple examples, they will use cut outs (with measurements) to see what fits in their peers rooms.  They need to be able to explain why at least 5 cut outs will fit in the rooms, and all of the areas they are taking away from the room.

Top 8 Text (5) Home Decor

The following are screenshots from Math in Daily Life, a website dedicated to advance excellent teaching in American schools.

http://www.learner.org

Math in Daily Life - Home Decorating

http://www.learner.org/interactives/dailymath/decorating.html

Text Based Strategies

• Scaling: students would know that a sketch of their room on paper, would just be a scaling of their actual room
• Area Formula
• Area of a square
• Area of a rectangle
• Measurements
• Feet or inches
• Reading a diagram: The sketch below refers to an area in the house, and the dimensions of a bedroom, bath, hallway, and living room

Top 8 Text (4) Math Critical Thinking

What do we all want our students to do, every day with every encounter they have?  THINK CRITICALLY right!  Want a better way to get our students to think critically?  Use  puzzles to challenge ether brain.  The Critical Thinking workbook written by Pamela Amick Klawitter, Ed.D.  Math Critical Thinking gives students the opportunity to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills.  Activities can be completed by individual students, or students can combat against each other.

The activities include opportunities for the student to practice their skills in convergent and divergent thinking, brainstorming, visual memory, forecasting, vocabulary development and categorizing or classifying.  These skills carry over into math content directly; and allows students to build motivation in the content area.

One of the qualities of a diverse learner is an advanced learner.  Always ahead of everyone else, quicker to respond to questions, etc.  This would be an awesome activity for them to continue to learn, even when they have completed their work.  Even for the ELL students, visual learners, and students that love new challenges, Math Critical Thinking workbook has a vast majority of puzzles, shapes, riddles, BINGO visuals, flowcharts and alphabet challenges.

Klawitter, Pamela, and Beverly Armstrong. Math Critical Thinking: Creative Puzzles to Challenge the Brain. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Learning Works, 2004. Print.

Top 8 Strategy (4) Word Wall

Need a strategy for your ELL students in your Math class?  Why not use Word Walls?  Word Walls are a collection of words placed in a clear view for the students to use on the wall.  Some times the words are strategically placed by units, topics or the preference of the instructor.  Students benefit from a Word Wall when they need that reminder what two skills are needed to answer a question or what were relate to each and why.

It wouldn't be unusual to find a Word Wall in every content area, especially because they are a great resource for ELL students.  One of the biggest challenges for my ELL students is making a connection between lessons.  They struggle with carrying their new learnings with previously learned concepts.  The Word Wall is a direct resource to get them from problem to problem without the feeling of frustrations.

I would start a Word Wall at the beginning of the semester and continuously add to it by UNITS AND CONCEPTS.  The most organized the Word Wall is, the more beneficial it will be to our ELL students, as well as all of our students.

Images of sample Word Walls are located below.

Top 8 Strategy (3) Reading Keys Bookmark

Math Reading Keys Bookmark!  Something fancy to help your students THINK with a purpose!

Mathematical language is very precise and compact and math authors EXPECT the reader to connect prior knowledge of math concepts.  The reader should be fluent in using the discourse of math vocabulary, too.  The time spent between students reading and understanding math word problems and create or solving the problem is a misunderstanding that needs clarity.  Using this bookmark can possibly clear that misunderstanding, as well as, help the struggling readers feel more comfortable reading the text.

I would use this text with creating linear equations from word problems or scenarios and/or creating and graphing quadratic equations.  Students seem to struggle with where variables belong in equations; so, this bookmark for reading could help them organize the reading, recite what they learned, put it in their words, then solve the problem accurately.  

Use this bookmark strategy to make sure your students, EVEN YOU, are absorbing the material.  

Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning (3rd ed.) by Doug Buehl, 2009, p. 145

Top 8 Text (3) Yahoo! Finance

Yahoo!!!  Not Yahoo Mail, let’s use Yahoo Finance!  Yahoo Finance is a media property owned and part of Yahoo!’s network.  Yahoo Finance provides financial news, data and commentary related to stock quotes, financial reports and economic updates.  In the past, I use Yahoo Finance to show students the difference in increasing, decreasing, and constant phases on a graph.  They were most surprised when I used a stock ticker that they were wearing or used, such as Nike or Apple.

One way to introduce Yahoo Finance to your students would be to ask them what they find interesting or what products are they using or wearing at that time.  Obviously, one of the most used products is a cell phone; and one of popularity is Apple products.  I typed in Apple and boom!  Students went crazy because they could see the fluctuations in the graphs according to stock prices.  Two things I asked students were:  At what times was Apple increasing in stock price?  What type of events happen that made that created the increase, decrease or constant stock market price?

In my opinion, to get the most of Yahoo Finance, use it in the beginning of the lesson.  It’s a sure way to “hook” the students into the content.  Another advantage would be that they would relate the examples of the pure content back to their favorite brand stock market.  For the ELL students, the visual learning would be beneficial to them understanding and reading the graphs.  For example, my students that are ELL used the brand stock market printout and connected the slopes to the ones I assigned to them.  They were able to demonstrate their learnings by tracing the slope of an increase, decrease and constant with their finger.  The visual learning strategy is deluxe to diversify learning. 

Located below is a shot of Nike stock market over a 3-month period.  (Be sure to show the students over a long span rather than daily because 3 month periods show phases of increase, sharp increase, steepness, decrease, drastic decrease and constant better).

http://finance.yahoo.com