Catherine's Response - Week 2

Dear group members,

          After reading Chapter 10, I gained some confidence as an aspiring math teacher. The reason why I say this is because this chapter offered a few collaborative learning practices that can be done to effectively integrate literacy and math. Because this chapter focused mainly on speaking and listening math, the techniques in this chapter encouraged this type of literacy learning. It is important that students are able to speak the language of math in order for them to expand their knowledge because they can share ideas, thoughts, wonderings, and etc. The techniques that I liked were Jigsaw, symbol-language glossary, but my favorite was the most was the Give and Take practice.
           For Alex---the Give and Take requires two students. One student is the giver and the other is the taker. The giver is the student who verbally describes a concept, a process, or an algebraic equation. The taker in return is the one who carefully listens and absorbs the description to produce a representation of what was given. I remember doing this activity with another student during a communication workshop at Pace. We stood back to back and my partner gave me descriptions of the picture she had and I had to try to replicate the picture she had at hand. It was challenging, but it definitely required us to effectively communicate with each other. Not only does this activity require listening skills, but also verbal. I loved this activity because it demonstrates that literacy is not just about reading. Instead, it is about being able to verbally express your thinking while listening attentively. This activity truly captures the ability for students to use content language to reach a goal by working together. This could be used in all content areas. Perhaps in Earth Science, students can try this method when learning how to classify rocks (sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks?).
            Allowing students to take charge and having the opportunity to safely communicate with a partner can help the teacher assess students as well.  I remember the first time I learned the Greek letter theta in Trigonometry. I was completely clueless and it took sometime for me to understand that it represented an unknown angle. I also remember having trouble-pronouncing theta. It affected my learning because I was unable to verbalize a symbol that continued to appear throughout the school year. Eventually, I learned and when I did, it was like a light bulb went off and everything finally made sense. I wonder how often do teachers make an effort to sincerely assess their student’s content language?
            This reading reminded me about chart in the Beers article on The Measures of Our Success. The chart on page 12 shows the 4-aspects of 21st-Century Learning. One of them includes, effective communication. It shows that in order for there to be academic achievement, students must be able to engage in interactive communication, teaming, collaboration, and interpersonal skills. Chapter 10 addresses and provides the reader with these tools to achieve effective communication. Additionally, the techniques in Chapter 10 also touched upon inventive thinking, where student’s curiosity and higher order thinking were provoked.
             Ultimately, speaking and listening can improve the learning within a mathematics lesson and for students to become well-rounded mathematicians. The practices that were presented all allow the teacher to clarify any misconception and identify student difficulties.
                                                                                                             Cathy