Kimberly's blog

I found a pretty cool resource for this weeks blog, I have linked it here for your reference. This is actually something I found on the Georgia Department of Education website. It is called the Georgia Numeracy Project, and it is a free resource for teachers and districts in Georgia to help develop students understanding of numbers. As a future math teacher myself, I know that understanding numbers is the root of everything will will do in my classroom. If my students don't understand numbers then they will not be able to apply a number understanding when solving a math problem. I think the Georgia Numeracy Project is really cool because of how much it offers. If you follow the like I provided, you will see that it is over 80 pages. However, these 80 pages are jammed packed with useful information that we can apply in our classrooms. One thing I really like about it is that it provides examples of student work. I think it is so important to have student work samples when ...

Summarize the article A group of Social Studies and ELA teachers collaborate and share their experiences of reading historical fiction and nonfiction. They found that reading both types of texts helped historical understanding and thinking in both ELA and Social Studies classrooms while also promoting historical empathy among students. Additionally, they found that teaching both historical fiction and nonfiction, students begin to understand historical fiction as an actual piece of literature.  Make connections  Some would argue that ELA and Social Studies go hand in hand because both usually rely heavily on reading and writing. I would, in some cases, agree with this. However, as a future math teacher, ELA is typically never related to my subject area. Reading the Math article a few weeks back really opened my eyes to the importance of integrating these two subject areas, and now reading the Social Studies piece, I can see this same importance here. I was in...

Hey everyone! I have linked my resource here for y'all to see. I think this is a wonderful resource for us future math teachers. It is a website created by Howard County School System, and it is jam packed for of resources and tools. The particular page I linked is for 5th grade math, and there are tons of different pdf files available for download. From place value charts to grids to venn diagrams, this website has so much to offer. As future math teacher, I think we will sometimes have a perfect lesson in our heads, but not have the resources to make it successful in our classrooms. Having these files that we can download instantly will for sure come in handy when we are trying to create interesting lessons. Not to mention, students love a fun worksheet, especially the kind that don't actually have real problems. Most of these pdf documents are supplementary materials, things that we can integrate into our lessons that students can use to visualize concepts. Whil...

Hey everyone! I am super excited about the resource I found for this weeks resource blog. I have linked it here for everyone. Open Up Resources is such an awesome resource, it even has the word resource in the name. In open up, you can choose your grade level and select teacher, parent, or student. Once selecting these options, you have access to so many different lessons and practice activities. I went through the family and student options (you have to sign up for the teacher option) and I was able to see all the units, go through lessons that directly correlate with the standards, and have access to countless practice problems. Once I start teaching, I will definitely sign up (and pay) to use this resource as a teacher, but even the things offered to students and families are amazing and worthwhile as is.  I think it is easy for people to wonder why literacy is important in math, but I would have to tell them that literacy is embedded into mathematics. Litera...

Reading is a fundamental concept that should be learned before the middle grades, however this is not always the case. In order to combat this, chapter 11 focuses on strategies for helping struggling readers. One of these strategies that stuck out to me was “use materials students can successfully read, but also give them extensive support for more challenging texts.” When using a text in the classroom, it is so important that we choose one that students can read. If they can’t read it, then there won’t be any understanding. This is not to say that we only need to choose below grade level or very easy text. It is important that we choose texts that still challenge our students, all of our students. In order to successfully do this, we must know our students and their reading levels. As a teacher, we must be intentional about making decisions in our classrooms based on our students' needs. Reading across the curriculum is important, and many times needed for student achieveme...

Mathematics and literature are two terms that aren’t typically correlated, however in a classroom, these two things need to be connected in order to better student understanding. If you can read and write about something, that means you understand it. This is the case for all subjects, including math. The article I have linked here describes this importance and gives examples of how to incorporate literature into mathematics. But, before I get into the article, I think it is important that we establish what exactly literature is. I think sometimes people assume that literature is only book. However, this is not the case, especially in a math classroom. Literature and literacy can be embedded in a multitude of different ways when teaching math. The article lists different ways to integrate literature into a math classroom: exploratory writing, informative/explanatory writing, argumentative writing, etc. We need to have our students write there answers to math problems in complet...

I think a lot can be learned from this week’s reading. Since this is one of the first classes I have taken on how to teach a subject rather than the subject itself, it has sparked some really good thinking for me. One thing I thought was particularly interesting in chapter 2 were the thinking strategies of effective readers. Reading is not always a fun and exciting thing for students. Oftentimes, many students, for lack of a better term, hate reading. But why? I think there are many factors, but one of which is that they simply don’t understand what they are reading. In order for reading to be an enjoyable task for our students, we must make it as interesting as possible. This is what I think these strategies are meant to do. It tells us to recall and connect it to something else. We must first and foremost make sure our students understood the reading. If they didn’t understand it, then there isn’t much we can do with that information. We must implement different strategies to make su...