Standard Six: Communication Skills
The teacher uses knowledge of effective verbal, nonverbal, media communication techniques to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom.
Math Interactive Notebook
Having our math notebooks to take notes in has been a great way for students to learn important key terms that are necessary to know. We use them to review math when doing activities and sometimes they are used during tests. These notebooks are a great way for students to discuss with their peers the importance of why we are taking notes on this particular topic and what our learning objective is for that day's section. Students participate actively in their journals in order to learn great new things about math.
Khan Academy for Teaching Multiplication with the Traditional Algorithm
Khan Academy has been a great website for our classroom to show students another way of communication after I have already taught and showed them a math concept. It just re informs the students in another way of the concept we are learning. Students really enjoy it and are actively engaged in it. I will stop and pause the videos at certain sections so we can discuss why this step occurs or how does it occur.
Wonderopolis Wednesday
We do Wonderopolis Wednesday as a fun way to learn new information that we may not know or we can find a video that connects to an unit we may be learning about at that time. Students can't wait for Wednesday because of Wonderopolis Wednesday. Students get to choose which video we get to watch and then learn about or sometimes I just pick if it's something that can be integrated into a certain unit of ours at that moment. Wonderopolis has a video that goes with each of the topics and then an article (expository text) that we read about that topic. Students learn so much from this website. After we watch and read the article, I have students discuss in pairs what was an interesting fact they learned or what was something they didn't know and then we have a whole class discussion. I also will have them discuss what would be a good question to have for Smartie of the Day. This helps students practice good question thinking. This is just another way for us to learn something new and to grow in our learning.