I have been blessedly spoiled this week. My district had already planned for a holiday this Friday so I was already lucky(or cursed) with a four day week. Then, that lovely snow storm hit, and my short week turned into a snowcation giving me Wed. and Thurs. off. Sweet, yes? Oh..it gets sweeter! Now, I am in the lovely city Nashville sipping on some local coffee, eating a bagel, and making NO plans to head home until Monday because we also have Presidents' Day off. I know, I know. Don't hate me. I'll make it up to you at the end of this post. Promise. So with that said, I hesitantly joined the Five for Friday linky this week because I really don't have anything exciting to share with you unless you want to see my week of photos that would have included my pajamas and screenshots of Netflix marathons. Have you seen this shirt? This is literally what I do on all of my snow days. ...
math
“How To” create a math task.
Creating a Math Task I cannot tell you how much I love the idea of Common Core math tasks. The tasks have changed the way that I teach, how the students think, and how we collaborate as a team in my classroom-across ALL content areas. I have been so blessed to be able to meet a lot teachers across the state of Tennessee in the last few months when attending state trainings. We have had the chance to ask/answer each other's questions, discuss how we implement these tasks, and how we use the information from the tasks to drive further instruction. One thing I want to REALLY stress to you is that tasks can be used in a variety of ways and many teachers use them differently in their classrooms. That is A-OKAY. In fact, that is what makes these tasks so beneficial to the students. Make it work for you and your class. So..these tasks are great. But...how do I create one? Well, that is what I am going to share with you today. Here are my top 5 tips to think about ...
Assessing vs. Advancing Questions
Last week, we talked about what accountable talk is and how it can be used to help strengthen the learning experiences in your classroom. Mostly, accountable talk is to be done by the students when asking each other questions throughout a math task or lesson. However, there is also another very important type of questioning that occurs during a lesson that I think of as teacher based questioning. Now, I am going to be honest with you right away. At the beginning of last year, I thought I was applying my questioning correctly with my kiddos. I had a chart on the wall that helped me mentally remember to ask various levels of Blooms' questions throughout a lesson, I planned my questions out ahead of time, and even had cutesy ways to flash them up on the SmartBoard if I needed to. Then, I had to record myself teaching a task for a grad class assignment. And....something awful happened. I realized that my questioning was all wrong. It seemed forced. My questions appeared ...
