GRAY’S SPACE

I’m reacting to Madhu’s Blog about a Comic book I created for Maths. Thanks for the profile Madhu.

I found on my prac that students reacted very well to Comic style work sheets. I was able to create some lessons using Comic Life and they were well received.

There is a strong level of disengagement with students and mathematics at the prac school.The school had only one Extension1 student and eight 2 Unit Maths students .The majority of students were studying General Mathematics. Teaching resources such as the Comic Book benefit and engage students who are struggling with 2 Unit and contemplating dropping to General Maths.

Comic Books simplify some of the concepts involved in the topic and reinforces them with extra diagrams and explanation.

Eventually the class would create their own topic summaries to share

“Having students create their own comics can improve motivation, literacy and conceptual understanding.”(Pelton et al 2007).

Here’s a little snapshot of the comic. I created the South Park figures from the South Park website – it has a free section for creating your own characters

Pelton,F. Pelton,L. T. & Moore, K. (2007). Learning by Communicating Concepts Through Comics. In C. Crawford et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2007 (pp. 1974-1981).

Annie’s post-“Skate to where the puck should be” makes me reflect back to the dimension of Classroom management named “WITH-IT-NESS” .

“Effective classroom management involves being with-it,maintaining focus and time management” -Educational Psychology p434Woolfolk& Margetts

‘With-it’ teachers are in tune with their students.They anticipate trouble before it arises ,they have eyes in the back of their head.-Educational Psychology p434 Woolfolk& Margetts

I learnt the hard way that my ‘with-it’ skills needed fine tuning during my prac. It’s definitely a major focus of next year. A skill I want to have razor sharp.

Bye

Danny’s eloquent post on the problem’s facing first year teachers is very much how I see next year unfolding plus throw in classroom management issues for good measure!! I agree that demands are heavy and time and resources limited.

I guess all we can do is be commited to change, attempt to be innovative and incorporate technology whenever we can. On top of that be the best we can.

The clock is ticking not long to go now until we can put it all in practice.

I just read Matthew’s blog on his discovery of Flash Maths . I visited the site and found it most helpful. There are a lot of applets that allow students to interact with Maths in a stimulating ,visual authentic way.

The stats regarding the improvement in understanding are impressive. I’ll hopefully be able to have a play with this next year when teaching.

Thanks Matthew

Reading Basil’s blog on the Karl Fisch blog. I thought I’d weigh in for my two cents worth. On both pracs I meet about 15 teachers in my KLA (maths). Not all used technology in their lessons, but all used technology in the staffroom – writing reports,responding to emails,working on the internet etc.I definitely think you would have trouble finding an absolute tech illiterate working for the DET today. Even if you did, big deal, they would be an isolated dying breed.

My other thought is you don’t have to be technologically literate to be an educator today. It’s just a smokescreen.You can teach perfectly well (albeit probably boring for today’s kids) without the aid of a computer if needs be.

Let’s have a look outside the field of education for a moment. U2 the biggest rock band in the world -selling millions of records. Many of their greatest hits have been produced by a self-professed “non-musician”- Brian Eno. The band loves the way he gets them working,thinking and creating during the recording & writing process. He get’s the best out of them, not by playing guitar better than the Edge,or singing better than Bono,but by guiding and opening them up to explore their creativity.

You don’t need to be fluent with technology to get the best out of your students – you just need to be a good teacher.