Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! This week I would like to talk about something that has always caught my interest, technology and gaming in the classroom. Considering we are all twenty first century learners and are going to be teaching in the "digital age", the topic of technology in the classroom is extremely important. School boards have already adapted fairly quickly from altering their policies of no cellphones and technology allowed from when I was in school, to an open door policy of BYOD, bring your own device, which is an extreme turn around of previous policies.
It's great that school boards are advocating students to use tools that they consistently operate on a daily basis, however, it is important to keep students engaged and on track now that they have more freedom in the classroom. Depending on internet that has firewalls and blocks social media and other websites is not reliable, as my experiences volunteering in a high school quickly taught me that students just download free apps such as "Free VPN", which changes the users internet settings temporarily and allows users to get past the firewalls. Furthermore a recent article by the telegraph describes how humans have a shorter attention span thanks to the technological age, however, are able to multi task more. The article reveals how the average human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to about 8 seconds now, reinforcing the stronger need to keep students engaged in the classroom. How might teachers keep students engaged in the classroom you might ask? Its simple... by allowing students and kids do activities they like to do. Playing games.
This week in my education class, we had the pleasure of playing several games that incorporated mathematics. The first game we played was HedBanz. HedBanz is a simple game that works around answering yes or no questions. Students are given a "headband" with a mathematical problem on it. Without looking at the problem on the card, they have to place it on their head and partner up with someone else in the class. Asking yes or no questions to their partner, they have to figure out what the problem was. In order to play this game, the students need to have a good understanding of mathematical relationships and processes, in order to get to the answer on their head. For instance in our class all the questions related to quadratic equations, and so students were asking if it was written in factored form, what degree the equation was in, if there was a vertical compression or not, and much more. In this light this is a great game for a formative assessment that keeps the students engaged. To get a better understanding of the game, watch the video from the famous Quentin Tarantino and Brad Pitt movie, Inglorious Bastards.
Although this game required students to have a lot of previous knowledge about the subject, another interactive game students can learn that is not as dependent on previous knowledge is on the mathematical app/website Desmos. Desmos is an interactive graphing calculator that students can use to graph simple and complex graphs and get a visual understanding of the subject matter. Along side Desmos is the game "Polygraph". Polygraph works similarly to the game "Guess Who", where students select a graph among 16 options and their partner has to ask yes or no questions in order to eliminate the options he or she deems unfit.
This makes it a little easier for the students compared to the HedBanz game because it gives an idea of the questions students should ask rather than completely coming up with questions out of thin air. Looking at the picture on the right, you can see students have a selection of graphs that their opponent has chosen. In both games the teacher can assess student knowledge by analyzing the questions they ask. The game works by trying to get to the answer in the fewest amount of questions. In our class, the quickest solution took a student body of future math educators four questions to get to the answer.
In the 21st century, we need to cater to our students' needs. This mean incorporating games into the classroom and keeping up to date with what keeps students interested. I look forward to using the above games and much more into the classroom in the future, and for people who do not see the benefit of incorporating games into the classroom, I strongly encourage them to see the benefits of gaming in an educational context like James Paul Gee advocates below.
Last week I discussed differentiated instruction and why it is a crucial element in every classroom. Every student is unique and therefore learns in different ways in comparison to other classmates and the teacher. It is important that teachers address each individual student's needs, and develop a lesson in a way that allows each person a fair opportunity to grasp the content. Unfortunately, this is not always the case as teachers are restricted in time and may not be able to cater to all thirty people in their classroom before moving on to the next lesson. As a result, students who are are doing well in class continuously advance while the students who are struggling to keep up continue to decline. Eventually, there is a gap between the students in the former and latter group that continues to grow and grow the older they get.
www.ontariomathedresources.ca
As teachers, our duty is to be concsious that there is a learning gap present in all classrooms, and actively work to close the gap. In order to realize where the gap is, teachers need to conduct a diagnostic assessment to understand student's prior knowledge. One avenue which teachers can use to address what areas students need help with, is provided by the government of Ontario and referred to as "gap closing". Gap closing resources are designed for students who need additional support in mathematics. For each topic in the resource, there is a diagnostic and a set of intervention materials that will help teachers uncover typical problems students have with a specific topic. The resource can be found by clicking here, and there are nine modules that cover a wide arrange of mathematical topics.
After reviewing the student booklet and the teacher resource associated with each module, I can clearly see how this is a diagnostic assessment. It covers various areas throughout the grade levels that would showcase where students are struggling. Although this is great, I do not see where the actual "gap closing" would take place. All the questions in the booklet followed a written test format. In my head this seemed quite ironic because this is probably the number one reason why the students are falling behind. We learn in teacher education how all students are different and learn differently, so I was under the assumption that therefore the diagnostic assessment would allow different avenues for students to demonstrate their knowledge.
Instead, the booklet looked like a written test or just a series of worksheets no different than how they probably learnt. There was evidence of some sort of open questions, but even as a future math educator I could see how these tasks would be difficult for students to complete. When I first heard of gap closing, it was with a colleague of mine who discussed how she used this booklet at her job with the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board as a "Tutor in the Classroom". She expressed how her duty was to use these booklets in order to close the gap, but it did not seem to work with many of the students she was working with.
So then how do we close the gap? Well although there may not be a clear-cut answer, the best path to take is to provide different avenues for students to showcase their math knowledge. Instead of getting students just to write out the answers or respond to a series of worksheets in a booklet, students can have oral conversations with teachers, construct mind maps and other informal techniques that still engage the student and allow teachers to assess what they have learnt. If teachers are expected to instruct students in different ways, then teachers need to accept various different forms of student work so that there is equity in the classroom.
Most students have anxiety when they feel like they are being evaluated and tested. Considering this is a diagnostic assessment and the teacher is just trying to figure out where the student stands before the lesson takes place, the teacher should consider using informal techniques in assessing student knowledge. There are mathematical games students can play, quizzes students can take such as Kahoot, completing interactive mathematical website activites such as Khan Academy, and many more options that teachers can use.
Research by John Holloway showcases that teachers who use assessment that supports learning and provides useful information to both teachers and students, in addition to technology that influences the mathematics taught, are the biggest factors in improving equity in the classroom and aid in closing the gap. Using the same sort of formal testing and written evaluations to close the gap is not an efficient method in providing an equitable mathematics classroom. It is my hope that in the near future there will be other forms of assessing students prior knowledge, and if you are aware of other methods please leave a comment so I can enhance my future classroom and help students who are in need. It is my goal to create an equitable classroom and close the gap as much as I can.
Holloway, John H. "Research Link/ Closing the Minority Achievement Gap in Math." Improving Achievement in Math and Science 51, no. 5 (February 2004): 84-86
This week I would like to talk about a very important concept in any classroom, differentiated instruction. Now when I first heard the term differentiated instruction, I thought it had to be very specific and cater to each individual child's learning needs. While this is part of the solution, this is not entirely true. When I entered teachers college and first began discussing differentiated instruction in my cohort, our instructor explained how differentiated instruction is not changing the lesson for each specific student, but catering to every student, so it could be as simple as talking slowly and clearly, enlarging the fonts, and other small adjustments. A better way to understand differentiated instruction is provided by edugains.ca by Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Secondary School. They explain,
"Differentiated instruction is not individualized instruction; it involves considering and selecting from a variety of instructional approaches and making frequent use of flexible, short-term groups to address a variety of learner needs and preferences."
In relation to this definition, a great instructional approach that teachers can use in their classroom to identify the variety of learner needs and preferences is the traffic light system. A detailed video about the traffic light system in the math classroom is demonstrated in the St. Mary's SS video.
The traffic light system is extremely beneficial in the classroom because it allows the students to illustrate how comfortable they are with the lesson, and therefore lets the teacher know who needs further assistance as well as who is comfortable with the lesson that was just taught. This allows the teacher to better manage their classroom because the students who have learned the lesson can do other activities, while the teacher can form short-term groups and further assist the students who identify themselves as yellow and red with a different method of instruction.
Another important factor of differentiated instruction is providing student choice. One method teachers can use in the classroom that gives student choice is by implementing open-tasked questions. There are two types of open-tasked questions. The first is open-ended, which means there are a variety of strategies a student can use and multiple correct answers. The second type is open-routed, which means that there are multiple strategies a student can use, but only one correct answer. Both are important in differentiated instruction because open tasks are inclusive of all students' mathematical thinking and its relative to students' zone of proximal development. This means that no matter what stage the learner is at in the lesson, they are working in their own comfort zone and the teacher can assess their mathematical reasoning and big ideas which are part of the mathematical processes.
Retrieved from: The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat; Capacity Building Series
In the end what is most important is the fact that all students receive and equitable treatment in the classroom. This means that teachers need to address the need's of all the students in the classroom and use techniques that will help all the students in the class, not just the majority of the students. It is the teacher's duty to make sure that every student gets a fair chance to learn, and this is why differentiated instruction is instrumental in the classroom and something all teachers need to take into consideration.
References:
Knowing and Responding to Learners in Mathematics.2015. Booklet
Capacity Building Series. The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat. September 2008.
