Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Blog Journal Entry 5

New Teachers Times
03/25/2009
Mr. Alarcon left a nice message about how he had his students purchase the Barrons Regents Review PowerPack. I will be telling my students that as well but I know many of them will not actually do it. I know some of my more motivated students will find it very useful. I liked his idea of making every test cumulative and will definitely be using that next year. I only did a cumulative mid-term and they will be having a cumulative final. It definitely makes sense since the regents tests the students on everything! I'm happy to hear that Meridyth is pretty much up to the same point as me and that we plan on using about the same amount of time for regents review. She also has been going straight through the chapters from the pearson book. I'll be interested in hearing if and which chapters or sections she may have skipped. I know some of it will not be covered but I do not know if I may have missed some that will or covered some that won't. Her idea of the online powerpoint regents review is great also... I think that some of the software I got from pearson my have something like that but I'm interested in finding out exactly which one she is referring to. Hopefully they will respond with some of this information.

Blog Journal Entry 4

Math Notations
There are twice as many girls as boys: 2G = B or G = 2B?
03/25/2009
I wrote back to the comment that was left and thanked the responder. Since I could tell that he obviously has a lot of math experience I asked him if he had any pointers for a first year teacher. I mentioned that I would be starting regents review in a month and a half and hoped that he could help me with some suggestions of what has worked for him. Hopefully he will reply with some great advice and ideas... we'll see.

Blog Journal Entry 3

Math Notations
There are Twice as many girls as boys: 2G=B or G=2B?
03/25/2009
I got a reply back on the blog. His comments talked about additional verbal problems and phrases that students often mess up like "the difference of M and N" and "M is less than N". He also have me a good idea of some other phrases to watch out for involving division, factoring and mulitples. An example of a division phrase students often mess up is "the ratio of M to N". The phrasing is very important in subtraction and division because they are not commutative. Even though I realized this it reminded me that the order you put the numbers in addition and multiplication phrases does not matter. Since students may have always got the right answer by putting the numbers in any order in addition and mulitplication phrases it may have led them to believe that they can do the same for division and subtraction phrases. The responder also gave me a useful mnemonic for my students to remember the ordering in the phrases of multiple and factor.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Blog Journal Entry 2

New Teachers Times
03/21/2009
Today I started a new blog called New Teachers Times. I have been having trouble finding recent blogs that are discussing issues that I am interested in and decided it might be useful to try to create a blog for new teachers to discuss anything. I've tried to make all St. John's fellows aware and hope they will get involved. The first posting I made was about regents exams asking how everyone is planning on preparing for the exam. Hopefully I get some good pointers and advice! We'll see. I also mentioned that I plan on using jmap.org which provides past regents problems and categorizes them in many useful ways such as by textbook chapter and section (Pearson Prentice Hall or Amsco). It also has all the exams in useful formats and has many, many other useful resources.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Blog Journal Entry 1

Math Notations
There are Twice as many girls as boys: 2G=B or G=2B?
03/21/2009

Blog involves math investigations, math challenges, problems of the day, standardized test practice, developing conceptual understanding in mathematics, issues in mathematics education with a focus on standards, assessment, and pedagogy primarily at the 7-12 level through AP Calculus.
The topic of this discussion was on translating words into math. For example, "there are twice as many girls as boys: 2G = B or G = 2B?".
This blog was a discussion about some of the expressions that students find difficult translating from words to math. There was some pointers on what works with some problems such as ratios and the importance of covering this sort of thought as a part of the standards. I agreed with the poster and thanked him for the original question he posted which I plan to use in my class during regents review. I also let everyone know of another translation that my students have diffuculty with, an example of which is "seven less than ten". 90% of my students want to put down 7-10 when it really should be 10-7. They find this one difficult because it has to be worked out backwards when most words can be written into expressions in the order from beginnning to end (assuming the students already know the vocabulary like "more than" is plus, etc.)