Monday, June 24, 2013

Building Mathematical Comprehension Chapter 3

Last summer I participated in a Guided Math Book Study by the same author. I have had a tough time keeping up, but I am caught up now and I am so thankful I didn't quit.

This chapters focuses on the importance of making connections in order to build understanding. The more students see connections the better their understanding. That makes sense. Sammons mentions the importance of having students see connections within the discipline of math, but also in other content areas and within their daily life.

I have my master of science in School Psychology and I remember the analogy that some of our students brains are making connections like traveling down the freeway with no traffic and other students connections are like traveling down a road with lots of turns. They will both arrive to their destination - one just makes it their faster. Sammons states,
...teachers must also explicitly teach learners how to recognize connections between their new learning and their existing background knowledge (p. 86).
One of the things that I am lovin' about this book is that it gives us some real tangible ideas and examples of what we as teachers can do.

Teachers can build schema by facilitating mathematical connections using:
  • Math-to-Self (M-S) connections between own life experiences and math
  • Math-to-Math (M-M) links between past and present learning
  • Math-to-World (M-W) relationship to current events
Modeling Think -Alouds are essential:
  • They should be genuine and conversational in manner, so proper planning on the part of the teacher is important
  • Be authentic- use life stories that can be related to math. For example, "On Saturday, I baked chocolate chip cookies. The recipe was for one dozen cookies but I only wanted to make six cookies. So, if the recipe called for two cups of flour ... Is the amount of flour I use important?" (You get the idea)
  • Be precise and concise- Use a set of sentence stems
I have not used Math Stretches in my class and am eager to try them out this coming school year. I created a few organizers that you can use too. Just click on pic to download!


I think the organizers could also be modified and made into anchor charts. On to Chapter 4.


1 comment :

  1. This is a great post and I really like your Math Stretch organizers.
    Thanks for linking up.
    Beth
    Thinking of Teaching

    ReplyDelete

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