Math Reflection Week 9: Measurement and Digital Tools

  For this week in our math course we are exploring how to teach measurements to students.  If geometry was my favorite strand in math then measurement was probably my second favorite.  Students learn measurement in math in three stages throughout the grades: definition/comparison, nonstandard units, and then standard units.  Nonstandard units mean using things like cubes, while standard units is measuring in centimeters or grams.  You can explore how this translates to a grade by grade level at the math curriculum here.  Throughout the grade levels students perform two overall expectations that are generally the same.  First they develop good measurement sense using estimation or physical measuring using a variety of strategies.  Second they determine measurement relationships, the relationships among units and measurable attributes among various shapes depending on the grade level.  I believe one of the reasons why I enjoyed both geometry and measurement is because they encourage the use of math manipulative.  Having something concrete to work with defiantly helped my learning and understanding of units of measurement.   

  If you want to know what teaching measurements looks like you can watch one of my teacher colleagues present a measurement lessons here.  I quite like this activity because it makes good use of math manipulatives, having students cut out images from magazines, having students estimate which ones are larger, compare them by size, and then calculate the area of the images using graph paper as a guide.   This lesson also makes use of different means of assessment for and as learning.  Her "students" made conjectures and hypothesis while they worked and the teacher gave feedback to these questions.  As stated earlier this lesson also makes good use of manipulatives, a great idea for a grade 4-5 lesson who often need these concrete manipulatives.  You can find strategies for providing assessment for and as learning in math here.  As I stated earlier this lesson makes good use of assessing reasoning and proving and representing.  The instructor does an excellent job of providing encouragement for the student's learning asking questions to the students, encouraging communication and having the students share their strategies. 

  I also had a chance this week to read and hear about my professor's (Rebecca Bunz's) strategies for better integration and evaluation of digital tools in the classroom.  I don't really think I have the space to go over everything about her strategy here, nor do I think I would be able to do it a good service in doing so.  Instead I would like to highlight one particular stage of her plan that stood out to me.  Stage 5 of her plan focuses on searching, finding, and evaluating digital tools, and highlights that teachers need to consider the cost, rating, age appropriateness, user policy, features, and above all play all the levels.  I believe that this level of scrutiny is so important to do if you are planning on using a digital tool for instruction.  Most important of all though you must consider if this tool will help your students achieve curriculum standards and learning goals.  This feeds back into the earlier criteria, that the teacher must familiarize themselves with the tool and determine if it achieves the goals you want, and if does not can it be accommodated.   Of course this is only step 5, and although it might sounds important there are other steps you have to take to use step 5 successfully, like establishing a PLC.