Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Blogging Assignment for Math Students
I have been thinking about ways to incorporate blogging into my 7th grade math classes. We have so much to cover in such a short time that I started to focus on eliminating my daily warm-ups and do a daily blog instead. The warm-ups serve to focus the class and get them thinking mathematically. I could substitute a "problem of the week," which could be a multi-step logic problem or brain teaser that would take higher order thinking. The students could interact with each other via blog postings to gain assistance, ask questions, voice strategies, etc. This would allow all my students to work together, not just those within the same class. This task incorporates several of the process standards as set by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics including, reasoning and proof, communication and problem solving.
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Do you have laptops or computer access for every student? I would love to do blogging assignments in my math classroom, however, we don't have the access to computers. May I also ask how many students/classes you have? I am curious to see if you may run into the same issue that I am anticipating. Because I teach 6 classes with about 30 students per class, I need to find some way of grouping them or something. If I don't, I'm wondering if my students will be able to truly be creative in their responses...there is too much of a temptation to piggy-back on others' responses.
ReplyDeleteI'm just curious how you could squeeze blogging in to your very busy math curriculum during class time. I also use warm ups to "hook" the students at the start of class, but they are usually very short, about 5 minutes in length. They are specifically designed to lead into a new topic, or check for prior knowledge. How would you logistically incorporate a blog in place of the warm up? I was wondering about your students' access to computers in the classroom. Does each student have access to a computer? I see this as potentially taking up a great deal of time, at least to begin with. Perhaps it is something you could do once a week, or as a homework assignment.
ReplyDeleteBeing a middle school art teacher, I am very curious of what type of schedule that you teach with in? My middle school has 8 period days that are 43 minutes apiece. I think that a blog would be a great start for everyday use, but how do you do it? I want to do something like this with in my art room, but I have to reserve a computer lab with all my kids, that is a week in adbanvce and for maybe 1-2 days tops.. I think that it is amazing that you can do such a thing. Where you teach can this be part of your curriculum? What about state standards? Are there state standards that you have to follow to incorporate such a great idea? I know when a good thing works usually has had to proven to the “powers that be” and I was wondering how you may have done this.
ReplyDeleteGreat job!!! I envy your efforts to keep middle school students on track, it is very hard.
Oh, I guess I should have said in my blog that I am very spoiled. I have 24 laptops and 5 desktop computers for my students. My largest class is 27 students. I have 5 classes that are 54 minutes long. I agree Beth, this may take too long to replace a warm-up. I would have to have all the laptops out and cued up every day. A weekly posting assignment sounds more reasonable.
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