Generation Z?

What is this idea of Generation Z? We spent a long time in class today discussing this concept and what it means for how we teach. Here are a few statistics that shocked me:

1. These kids have no idea what life was like with no internet. Like, none. How weird is that? I use the internet every day, but I can definitely imagine living without it if I had to. How different would my worldview be if I saw internet as something that was as expected as electricity or running water?
2. They spend more time playing video games than they do in school (Over 10,000 hours vs less than 9,000 on average). This really shouldn’t be a surprise to me since every kid I know plays video games whenever they are given a chance. Still, I’m going to need to find ways to manage their love for video games, or maybe incorporate them into my lessons.
3. They are connected most of the time. This is more applicable to older students, but most have a cell phone and are online connecting with people for a large part of their days. Many teachers force their students to be “unplugged” while in the classroom, but what if we could find ways to teach being connected responsibly (ie not texting while someone is talking to you) instead?

Although today’s generation presents a lot of challenges for us as teachers, I think the opportunities available are also amazing. There are so many possibilities for research and connecting to our world that weren’t available when the only available resources to students were found in the school library and when others were reachable only by phone or snail mail. I’m excited to see how these possibilities could play out in my classroom.

Sources:

Click to access Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

http://www.wikia.com/Generation_Z:_A_Look_at_the_Technology_and_Media_Habits_of_Today%E2%80%99s_Teens

 

Manipulatives

I really enjoyed discussing all the different manipulatives available for place value in class today. I vaguely remember using some of the sets shown in class for different activities, but I have two memories that show me how I can do a much better job incorporating these sets into my class than some of my teachers did.

First, my most vivid memory of using base ten place value manipulatives comes from a set that one of my teachers had in her class (it may have been grade three). The sets were made out of either pink or blue translucent plastic and they were built like Lego so you could stack them on top of each other. I’m assuming this was so you could represent twelve by stacking two ones on top of a ten, but we just used them to build houses and these wheel shaped things. You weren’t cool until you made a wheel in math class or during an indoor recess! Also, since the sets contained both blue and pink pieces, it essentially meant social ostracization if you were a girl seen playing with blue manipulatives, or vice versa.

Second, and more soberingly, the manipulatives were seen as a crutch for those kids who were “bad at math.” If you knew what you were doing and did the worksheet correctly, the teacher left you alone. However, if you just couldn’t grasp the concept she instructed you to go get some base ten blocks. I’m sure she never intended to embarrass us, but we all noticed when the same kids made that trek across the classroom every time we did math.

I feel I can learn a lot from these two memories. First and foremost, I need to encourage students to use manipulatives whenever they need them, not just when they get stuck. Perhaps I can instruct everyone to have manipulatives on their desk when we are doing a math lesson, or maybe I can create some lessons that must be done with manipulatives so that they become just another tool for my students rather than something used by the kids who don’t get math. I also need to seek out manipulatives that will encourage study rather than games. Yes, kids learn through play, but I can’t think of a single math concept I learned by building houses out of our base ten blocks. Neutral wooden blocks like the ones we saw in class today could eliminate gender wars over the colour of the blocks, and also help students realize that one is one no matter the colour. Although it’s hard to avoid students building things with stackable blocks, a good discussion about how they should be used could help alleviate that problem.

When I was in elementary school I firmly believed that manipulatives were useless if you knew how to do math. Hopefully I can change that perspective for my students and help them see that manipulatives can be useful tools to enhance our understanding of mathematics.

Metaphors

We spent a long time in class today talking about metaphors in mathematics. In our conversation, two distinct sides emerged. One: that metaphors have no place in the mathematics classroom – words like “borrow” and “carry” just tie into rote memorization of numbers and strategies and are therefore bad. Two: metaphors are useful in certain circumstances and we shouldn’t unilaterally ban them all from a mathematics classroom without examining what they really do. I agree with this second point of view, in that metaphors have their time and place, and they can indeed be useful.

I agree that teachers should not spend their time telling students to borrow and carry without explaining what those words really mean. In my own math instruction; however, that was not done. The first time I learned to borrow, my teacher explained that the ones and the tens were friends and to do this subtraction the ones had to ask the tens if they could borrow one of the tens to become ten ones. This metaphor worked for me as a six year old and helped me subtract until I understood the concept more fully and could do without it. I had a similar explanation for carrying. I was able to internalize these strategies through visualization. In these circumstances, metaphors actually made the math more concrete for me as it was described in real world rather than abstract terms.

After thinking about my own math experiences above, I think that metaphors really do have a place in a mathematics classroom. They can be simple things like borrowing, or they can be grand metaphors that perhaps connect an entire lesson on measurement or geometry to the ecology of a forest. Metaphors enrich our use of language and often allow for deeper understanding. However, I think we must also be cautious when using metaphors. Even though the meaning of words such as borrow or carry may be explicit to us as teachers, they are not for our students. When using a metaphor to teach math, it is absolutely necessary to explain that metaphor fully, as my teacher did for me, and as if students have never heard that particular metaphor before. If, and only if, metaphors are explained completely, then they can become useful tools for teaching mathematics rather than reminders of the rote memorization used in the past.

Thom, Jennifer S. (2012). Traditions, Tensions and Transitions. In Re-rooting the Learning Space: Minding Where Children’s Mathematics Grow. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. (pp. 45-72).

Useful Technology Resources

I am hoping this post can become a running list of good classroom resources I run across. It will be updated from time to time.

ARC-BC This site has alternate formats (spoken, digital) of most textbooks used in BC classrooms. You need to have a contract with a school in order to access these resources; however, as most of them are heavily protected by copyright.

Duolingo – programs for learning a second language. I’ve been using this to practice my French and I’m hooked! It’s way more fun and has much harder levels than any other free language software I’ve tried.

Edmodo – This seems like a way more interactive version of Moodle. I’ll have to check it out more in the future and create an account, but it looks very cool!

ipl2 – Database of trusted online sources for research. It’s searchable and has separate kids’ and teens’ sections, as well as collections for researching specific topics

Kurzweil – used often in Special Education classrooms

Media Smarts – great resource to teach digital and media literacy, with a Canadian focus

Prezi – Not quite as innovative anymore, but it’s still an awesome alternative to powerpoint.

Robert Munsch – Free audio files of him reading his books. What more can i say?

StoryBird – You can browse stories that other people have created and then make your own. This could be really cool for a LA lesson

Storyboard That – Lets the user create a storyboard by selecting from a variety of images and backgrounds. This could be really fun for a language arts lesson!

Storyline Online – Videos of actors reading popular children’s books – the illustrations from the books are animated and they make the books really come alive!

more to come!

Detached Inevitability

It [mathematics] requires silence and neat rows and ramrod postures that imitate its exactitudes. It requires neither joy nor sadness, but a mood of detached inevitability: anyone could be here in my place and things would proceed identically.

– David Jardine

This quote sums up exactly what I enjoyed about my math classes in elementary school. So many of our other subjects were focused on thinking creatively, processing new ideas, and other activities that fostered deep understanding of the material. Math was simple. I sat down, learned a new formula or strategy, and neatly applied it to a page of questions. It provided a nice break from all the deep thinking required in other subjects.

In this course, we’ve been discussing how to do the type of deep thinking that I encountered in science and social studies and language arts to a mathematics curriculum. What are the implications of doing this? Could we be piling too much on our six and seven year olds by expecting them to think deeply about everything they encounter in school? Should there not be time to merely memorize some information and give their brains a rest?

This might be a valid point, but I think that if deep understanding of mathematics is presented in a carefree way through games and group activities instead of expecting each child to sit down and write a paragraph on the meaning of addition, then the classroom atmosphere will be kept light and children will not grow tired of learning. Deep understanding can be encouraged while maintaining the playful nature that is so inherent in young children.

Now, what about the time it takes to create this type of mathematics understanding? Clearly it is faster to go over one strategy and then hand out a worksheet. Will we be sacrificing time needed to learn Language Arts or Science if we teach math in this new way? This will be a delicate balance in my classroom, and something I will have to work on over time.

Thom, Jennifer S. (2012). Help Wanted. In Re-rooting the Learning Space: Minding Where Children’s Mathematics Grow. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. (pp. 31-44).