Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Minds on Math Book Study-Chapter 10 "Sharing and Reflection"


Minds on Mathematics Book Study

If this is your first time joining our book study please click on the button above and it will link to all previous posts.  Feel free to go back and add a link to any previous chapters.  You can link up your post on Chapter 10 at the bottom of this post.  Please visit the other bloggers who have linked up below and leave them comments.  Lots of great ideas are being posted on other blogs! Also check out previous chapters as links are still being added by other bloggers.

Twitter chat update:  Our first twitter chat for our book study Minds on Mathematics Using Workshop Model to Develop Deep Understanding in Grades 4-8 will be this coming Tues night July 30th at 7:00 PM CST, 8:00 PM EST.  We will use the hashtag #momathchat for our chat.  Please join in and feel free to invite any other math teachers.  Hope many of you are able to join in! If you have never joined a twitter chat please check out the following link explaining How to participate in a Tweet Chat.  Make sure you have a twitter account if you want to join the chat.  If you have any questions feel free to contact me.  I hope many of you who have been participating in our book study are able to join the chat and I would love for anyone curious about workshop model in math to also join in. Anyone is welcome to participate.

I am blogging early this AM because I have a grad class the next three days 8-4 on Math Workshop.  I'm really looking forward to being able to collaborate with my 7th Grade math team as we are all taking the class.  For today's post I will just be posting my thoughts on the chapter.  I did not have time to do a summary as I have been doing.

This chapter is so important because sharing and reflection is really key to making sure the learning "sticks" for students.  Metacognition gives students a chance to focus on what they learned and synthesize their understanding of the concepts.

The purpose of sharing is for students to think about their own ideas and to evaluate their thinking.  It's important for the teacher not to jump in and take away the student's chance of explaining his thinking.  We need to facilitate the students' sharing of ideas.

Reflection is the learner considering his own growth and progress as a mathematician.  The author gives some great reflection prompts on pages 162-163.  This reflection can be oral or written.  This reflection time is so important for the students to solidify their learning and to be able to justify their thinking to others.  This is such an important component to the workshop model and I can see how it is easy to run out of time when you only have a 60 min period (and some of you less) everyday.  I think I will need to have some sort of system in place to make sure we save enough time at the end of class for sharing and reflection.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this book study.  I have enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts and ideas.  Many people have posted new links to previous chapters that I still need to check out and encourage all of you to go back and check for new links so you can gain another perspective.  I hope you all are able to join our #momathchat tonight 7-8 CST.  I would also love for us to do some follow up posts this year as we implement the workshop model into our math classrooms.  I will continue to do blog posts as I develop this model in my classroom.

5 comments:

  1. I agree with you about needing a system in place for sharing and reflection. I'm still trying to figure that one out for a 42 minute period.
    I'm going to try and participate in the chat tonight.. My daughter has softball tryouts, but I'm going to try and at least read through!
    Thanks for doing this!
    Michele
    Coffee Cups and Lesson Plans

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    1. Hope you can chat tonight Michele. Thanks for all your participation in the book study and sharing your great ideas.

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  2. This is definitely an area where I was lacking. Occasionally I would have a really good reflection time, but they were few and far between. "Unless we punctuate our lesson with some opportunity for metacognition, much learning is lost."

    I didn't really think about it before, but I also see the benefits for the teacher, it can help guide your lesson the following day based on misconceptions or successes.

    My question is: on page 157 is talks about celebrating multiple approaches. But what if one of the approaches is incorrect and doesn't work. I know the teacher isn't supposed to correct the mistake, so how do you handle this?

    Hoffer talks about using a document camera often, I don't have one of these in my classroom...any suggestions on what else I can use?

    I think it's important to model what we expect when students go to the board: they need to explain their thinking, not just show the class.

    I like all the questioning on page 160-163. That's another thing I need to print off and have in my back pocket. In their reflection, I like acknowledging who the audience is and saying, pretend like you're talking to me and write that down.

    In the box on page 164, one of the bullets says dedicate sufficient class time to writing so that it is not rushed or blown off...what are you thoughts on having this as homework? I have been thinking about how I want to do homework next year and I have heard that having them write more of a reflection rather than practice problems is more beneficial.

    A question I was asking myself as I was reading this is how am I going to read all of their reflections? Then, I saw that it was slightly answered at the end of the chapter. I still don't fully know how I'm going to read all of them and respond in a timely manner, but that is something I will have to try. Any suggestions?

    Jillian Morris
    www.morris6411.blogspot.com

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    1. Hi Jillian,
      I would say that if you see a mistake you don't jump in right away and correct it, but try and lead the discussion so a student uncovers the mistake. As you have a student justify their wrong answer hopefully another student will jump in and correct them. I certainly would not let my students leave believing a misconception, I felt the point was more to get the students to be able to figure that out as they critique each other.


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  3. Thanks for leading this study Sherrie! I really enjoyed reading the book and have learned TONS of things I'd like to implement within my classroom. I look forward to reading more from you and hearing how others fare using math workshop this year. Thanks again!

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