Describe how you have incorporated learning strategies or examples of UDL, Mnemonics, etc. discussed today in your current teaching practices or lesson plans.
How do you forsee implementing these practices in your future lessons?
In Special Education, one finds teaching to modalities, incorporating movement, music, manipulatives, etc. to be invaluable. I find myself always looking for different approaches and methods to teach/reteach concepts. Lesson organization and follow-through are key elements in this.
In teaching order of operation, we have used mnemonic strategies to help students remember the order of simplifying operations. In my class, students were given a variety of ways of completing assignments: they can complete on paper, explain to class verbally and give me good reason for their response, they can explain the promblem to peers who have trouble understand the concept. They are given credits for all these ways of finishing the assingment.
I have used very few higher level question styles (You and Author and On Your Own) in my teaching because students struggled with the two lower levels of questioning, but I am planning on using more higher level questions in order to encourage the deeper thought. If persistant, I am hoping more kids will give into the deeper thought and begin to learn how to think more independently. I also think using more pretests could help students gain confidence when they are not sure how to do something and when they do the post test are able to do so.
All my students are deaf so I use lots of visual information. Powerpoint, whiteboard and especially Jeopardy game format on the whiteboard are very successful. Visual information has to be more than the students and I watching each other sign. As I learn more about technology I will use more in my classroom. However, there is also the real concern of not having the technology. We don't have wireless and some of our students don't have computer access at home.
I do many hands on activities to present math concepts. I teach younger students, and they really need the manipulatives to help them to understand concepts. I do a lot of graphing information for example, how many children ride the bus to school. I tie in visual, auditory, and movement activities to represent information. I also do a lot of songs and movement games to teach different concepts.
My school initiated RTI last year and all teachers used a strategy similar to QAR that we learned about today. Students were taught to identify and highlight each question as a green, yellow, or red question. Green questions are "Right" questions. The answer can be found easily in the text. The yellow questions are the "Think and Search" questions. This answer is one that students must make connections between pieces of information in the text. Red questions are "On My Own" and are based on students' knowledge.
Students were forced to stop and analyze each question which aided them in developing their answers.
When comparing my lesson plan to the UDL guidelines just now, it already matches up in many areas. The material is presented in different audio and visual formats. They hear from myself, other students, and watch an online video clip from Brainpop. I try to incorpoprate Mnemonics with students creating their own and/or learning a tried and true one such as KHDMdcm (King Henry Danced Merrily during christmas morning) for converting Metric Measurements. Also, I thought that John's idea today to have the graph of the challenges done by height was a great visual tool and kinestic activity. Many of these ideas are basically common sense and easy to put in place but as teachers we sometimes get too bogged down to teaching to and practicing for tests.
I have often used modeling in helping teach my special needs students. I try to explain each step in a problem and what I am thinking in completing each step. This helps the students in breaking down problems and understanding each step. I also try to build proficiency by using simpler problems first. After their confidence is built up, then we look at the more complex problems. Often, I will have the students write down the steps in their own words so that they can review it the next time we see those problems.
When teaching converting metric units I use the phase "King Henry died drinking chocolate milk" to help students remember the order of the prefixes. When I teach multiplying and dividing integers I talk about the good guys and the bad guys. If the good guys (+) stay in town (+) that is a good thing so the answer is positive. If the good guys (+) leave town (-) that is a bad thing so the answer is negative. If the bad guys (-) stay in town (+) that is a bad thing so the answer is negative. If the bad guys (-) leave town (-) that's a good thing so the answer is positive. I can definitely see using other mnemonics to help my students remember how to solve problems especially those with multiple steps. I would probably get the students involved in creating the mnemonics because I know they can be far more creative than I can.
I love Amber's "good guy, bad guy staying or leaving town" mnemonic way of teaching integers! That helps me! I am going to use that with students and my own kids. That totally makes sense to me. When I helped teach integers to students last year in a collaborative setting we used a number line and got the kids to move around on a line of tape marked off on the floor to act out the different problems. The kids enjoyed the activity but it still didn't click with most of them. This "good guy staying in town or bad guy staying in town or good guys leaving town" is something I think the students could comprehend. We also used the "PEMDAS-which ever comes first, working from left to right" with Order of Operations and after doing those type of problems for weeks of Bell Ringers the kids seemed to grasp the concept.
I would love to have a list of mnemonics to use for high school students. Usually with a little reminding they remember PEMDAS or Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. I know these can be helpful to students. However I have seen students get hung up on trying to remember a help instead of moving on in a test situation. I will try to have students help making up some mnemonics.
I've used PEMDAS frequently when teaching order of operations. I've discovered this past SY that when introducing parenthesis within parenthesis special needs student get quite confused by a concept they thought they'd mastered. I started using an expanded form of PEMDAS as a result, drawing examples on the board or using handouts to illustrate the need to solve the innermost set of parenthesis and work your way out. Also, student tend to forget that you do all multiplication and division from left to right as one step, followed by addition and subtraction. I'll often draw an illustration for this concept also.
I incorporate many different learning strategies in my daily lessons and I am always looking and learning new ideas. I do use some mneumonics in my classroom. I find that at times students get so tied up with remember the mneumiic that they don't understand what to do after that. I incorporate different colors with my notes, use technology when ever possible, I use target scores for rewards, peer tutoring, guided reading exercises to name a few. Will I incorporate others.....definitely. Give me a new idea and show the how's and why's and I will give it a try. I am good at modifying to accommodate my students.
One of the mnemonics that my students found to be helpful this year was for rounding whole numbers. Some could never remember whether they needed to round up or down. The little phrase that we came up with was five and above give it a shuv, four and below give it a throw. We also underlined the digit in the place we were rounding to. Then, we boxed the number that came right after the place we were rounding to. We called this digit the indicator. By doing the underlining and boxing, this helped the visual learners. The little saying was a strategy that hepled the auditory learner as well. I want to use more mnemonics and learning strategies to help my students become more successful life-long learners.
Most of us confess to using PEMDAS for order of operations when we were children and, what's more, we still know it. It must have had an impact on us. This idea has always made me return to my experiences when trying to find or create activities for my students. Think of the phrase, "If it works for me, why not thee?" It is important to make sure the activity is not more cumbersome, confusing, or complex than the concept being taught.
I believe that most teachers already use components of UDL, Mnemonics, and/or variations of without actually knowing they are using them; they just didn't know they had names. Like our students, we must know the vocabulary, right? (Speaking for myself here.)
I USE, and WILL CONTINUE TO USE, strategies, ideas, activities, etc. that I feel are beneficial in my classroom. I am always ready to hear ideas from others and willing to share things I keep in my bag of tricks.
One such item is "O to the 3rd" (the Order Of Operations song). It is too much for the blog so I will try to have it available during our class for those who are interested. It is a differentiated instruction activity. I wish I could take credit for the song, but someone saved me the time and did it for me....lol
I feel that I have a few good lessons were I incorporate UDL strategies. I created a trig lab where the students work in groups to solve real lfe problems of finding mearsurement of lenghts and angles and then using trig to find the unknown measurement. The students use tape measure, angle finders, and camera. They have to also give presentation on their finding and write a paragraph on each station to describe what they were doing and compare their data to the entire classes data. If they find that they are off by alot, they are allowed to go back and re-measure to see it they can figure what they did incorrect. This year I hope to incorporate GPS devise to help with the measure to make it more realistic. However, like I said, I have a few lesson. I feel I need to improve in using different strategies in every lesson. I tend to go back to my comfort zone as the year progresses. I hope to use more and different type of UDL stragegies in more lessons this year.
In Special Education, one finds teaching to modalities, incorporating movement, music, manipulatives, etc. to be invaluable. I find myself always looking for different approaches and methods to teach/reteach concepts. Lesson organization and follow-through are key elements in this.
ReplyDeleteIn teaching order of operation, we have used mnemonic strategies to help students remember the order of simplifying operations.
ReplyDeleteIn my class, students were given a variety of ways of completing assignments: they can complete on paper, explain to class verbally and give me good reason for their response, they can explain the promblem to peers who have trouble understand the concept. They are given credits for all these ways of finishing the assingment.
I have used very few higher level question styles (You and Author and On Your Own) in my teaching because students struggled with the two lower levels of questioning, but I am planning on using more higher level questions in order to encourage the deeper thought. If persistant, I am hoping more kids will give into the deeper thought and begin to learn how to think more independently. I also think using more pretests could help students gain confidence when they are not sure how to do something and when they do the post test are able to do so.
ReplyDeleteAll my students are deaf so I use lots of visual information. Powerpoint, whiteboard and especially Jeopardy game format on the whiteboard are very successful. Visual information has to be more than the students and I watching each other sign. As I learn more about technology I will use more in my classroom. However, there is also the real concern of not having the technology. We don't have wireless and some of our students don't have computer access at home.
ReplyDeleteI do many hands on activities to present math concepts. I teach younger students, and they really need the manipulatives to help them to understand concepts. I do a lot of graphing information for example, how many children ride the bus to school. I tie in visual, auditory, and movement activities to represent information. I also do a lot of songs and movement games to teach different concepts.
ReplyDeleteMy school initiated RTI last year and all teachers used a strategy similar to QAR that we learned about today. Students were taught to identify and highlight each question as a green, yellow, or red question. Green questions are "Right" questions. The answer can be found easily in the text. The yellow questions are the "Think and Search" questions. This answer is one that students must make connections between pieces of information in the text. Red questions are "On My Own" and are based on students' knowledge.
ReplyDeleteStudents were forced to stop and analyze each question which aided them in developing their answers.
When comparing my lesson plan to the UDL guidelines just now, it already matches up in many areas. The material is presented in different audio and visual formats. They hear from myself, other students, and watch an online video clip from Brainpop. I try to incorpoprate Mnemonics with students creating their own and/or learning a tried and true one such as KHDMdcm (King Henry Danced Merrily during christmas morning) for converting Metric Measurements. Also, I thought that John's idea today to have the graph of the challenges done by height was a great visual tool and kinestic activity. Many of these ideas are basically common sense and easy to put in place but as teachers we sometimes get too bogged down to teaching to and practicing for tests.
ReplyDeleteI have often used modeling in helping teach my special needs students. I try to explain each step in a problem and what I am thinking in completing each step. This helps the students in breaking down problems and understanding each step. I also try to build proficiency by using simpler problems first. After their confidence is built up, then we look at the more complex problems. Often, I will have the students write down the steps in their own words so that they can review it the next time we see those problems.
ReplyDeleteWhen teaching converting metric units I use the phase "King Henry died drinking chocolate milk" to help students remember the order of the prefixes. When I teach multiplying and dividing integers I talk about the good guys and the bad guys. If the good guys (+) stay in town (+) that is a good thing so the answer is positive. If the good guys (+) leave town (-) that is a bad thing so the answer is negative. If the bad guys (-) stay in town (+) that is a bad thing so the answer is negative. If the bad guys (-) leave town (-) that's a good thing so the answer is positive. I can definitely see using other mnemonics to help my students remember how to solve problems especially those with multiple steps. I would probably get the students involved in creating the mnemonics because I know they can be far more creative than I can.
ReplyDeleteI love Amber's "good guy, bad guy staying or leaving town" mnemonic way of teaching integers! That helps me! I am going to use that with students and my own kids. That totally makes sense to me. When I helped teach integers to students last year in a collaborative setting we used a number line and got the kids to move around on a line of tape marked off on the floor to act out the different problems. The kids enjoyed the activity but it still didn't click with most of them. This "good guy staying in town or bad guy staying in town or good guys leaving town" is something I think the students could comprehend.
ReplyDeleteWe also used the "PEMDAS-which ever comes first, working from left to right" with Order of Operations and after doing those type of problems for weeks of Bell Ringers the kids seemed to grasp the concept.
I would love to have a list of mnemonics to use for high school students. Usually with a little reminding they remember PEMDAS or Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. I know these can be helpful to students. However I have seen students get hung up on trying to remember a help instead of moving on in a test situation. I will try to have students help making up some mnemonics.
ReplyDeleteI've used PEMDAS frequently when teaching order of operations. I've discovered this past SY that when introducing parenthesis within parenthesis special needs student get quite confused by a concept they thought they'd mastered. I started using an expanded form of PEMDAS as a result, drawing examples on the board or using handouts to illustrate the need to solve the innermost set of parenthesis and work your way out. Also, student tend to forget that you do all multiplication and division from left to right as one step, followed by addition and subtraction. I'll often draw an illustration for this concept also.
ReplyDeleteI incorporate many different learning strategies in my daily lessons and I am always looking and learning new ideas. I do use some mneumonics in my classroom. I find that at times students get so tied up with remember the mneumiic that they don't understand what to do after that. I incorporate different colors with my notes, use technology when ever possible, I use target scores for rewards, peer tutoring, guided reading exercises to name a few. Will I incorporate others.....definitely. Give me a new idea and show the how's and why's and I will give it a try. I am good at modifying to accommodate my students.
ReplyDeleteOne of the mnemonics that my students found to be helpful this year was for rounding whole numbers. Some could never remember whether they needed to round up or down. The little phrase that we came up with was five and above give it a shuv, four and below give it a throw. We also underlined the digit in the place we were rounding to. Then, we boxed the number that came right after the place we were rounding to. We called this digit the indicator. By doing the underlining and boxing, this helped the visual learners. The little saying was a strategy that hepled the auditory learner as well. I want to use more mnemonics and learning strategies to help my students become more successful life-long learners.
ReplyDeleteMost of us confess to using PEMDAS for order of operations when we were children and, what's more, we still know it. It must have had an impact on us. This idea has always made me return to my experiences when trying to find or create activities for my students. Think of the phrase, "If it works for me, why not thee?" It is important to make sure the activity is not more cumbersome, confusing, or complex than the concept being taught.
ReplyDeleteI believe that most teachers already use components of UDL, Mnemonics, and/or variations of without actually knowing they are using them; they just didn't know they had names. Like our students, we must know the vocabulary, right? (Speaking for myself here.)
I USE, and WILL CONTINUE TO USE, strategies, ideas, activities, etc. that I feel are beneficial in my classroom. I am always ready to hear ideas from others and willing to share things I keep in my bag of tricks.
One such item is "O to the 3rd" (the Order Of Operations song). It is too much for the blog so I will try to have it available during our class for those who are interested. It is a differentiated instruction activity. I wish I could take credit for the song, but someone saved me the time and did it for me....lol
I feel that I have a few good lessons were I incorporate UDL strategies. I created a trig lab where the students work in groups to solve real lfe problems of finding mearsurement of lenghts and angles and then using trig to find the unknown measurement. The students use tape measure, angle finders, and camera. They have to also give presentation on their finding and write a paragraph on each station to describe what they were doing and compare their data to the entire classes data. If they find that they are off by alot, they are allowed to go back and re-measure to see it they can figure what they did incorrect. This year I hope to incorporate GPS devise to help with the measure to make it more realistic.
ReplyDeleteHowever, like I said, I have a few lesson. I feel I need to improve in using different strategies in every lesson. I tend to go back to my comfort zone as the year progresses. I hope to use more and different type of UDL stragegies in more lessons this year.