I have absolutely loved this course. There is so much more to teaching than meets the eye. One thing I've thought a lot about, is how I'm going to help encourage oral language in my mathematics classrooms. Being able to orally speak math and understand it can be very complicated for students. From this class, I learned how important it is for a teacher to model oral language skills, and then provide the students multiple opportunities to use oral language. I also realized that you don't have to "go out of your way" to teach comprehension and literacy to your students. It's something that goes hand-in-hand with teaching the required content.
I also realized how vital it is to teach vocabulary words. In mathematics, it's so obvious to me that 'and' means 'addition,' and 'or' means 'multiplication.' However, students might not grasp that concept as easy as I do. There are so many Mathematical and FACS terms out there that I take for granted. Same as oral language, it helps the students immensely as teachers give them multiple encounters with specific terminology. If we don't take the time to help our students understand our content vocabulary, we will be thinking...
while our students are thinking...
Overall, I have loved this course. There are many strategies I've learned that I'm excited to incorporate into my future teaching career. This course has opened my eyes to a whole new level and world of education.
I loved the graphics that you had! The second one is totally true for students. A lot of times students just pretend to know what is going on...when really they think you speaking a foreign language. I agree with you that students need multiple interactions with vocabulary words to be familiar with what they mean. I believe you are going to be a great teacher!
ReplyDeleteI especially appreciated your reflection about using oral language in the classroom. So many math teachers lecture and then students do independent seatwork in silence...which means that students never get the opportunity to talk about mathematical concepts using core vocabulary words. I liked how you are thinking of ways to turn that traditional method on its head through having kids talk, discuss, and hash out ideas.
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