Aimee's Random Thoughts About Stuff

2011-03-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

DESERT Model #3- Subject Matter: Understands central concept and can create learning experiences that make subject matter meaningful for students.

October 27, 2010

The class learned about time, Paige did not understand the concept about time. She is always asking what time is it? How much longer until lunch time? I would ask her when lunch started, she would tell me, "At noon." So I would ask, "What time is it now?" She would then tell me that she did not know! One day the teacher showed me the worksheet they had done as a class. It had question marks covering it. At the top she had written "Need help." So I pulled her back with her worksheet and asked for her to tell me what she was confused about. She said, "I don't understand any of it. " I began the intervention by explaining that 60 seconds is 1 minute, that 60 minutes is 1 hour. Then I asked her if she could show me the hour hand. She indicated that she couldn't. I explained that the smaller hand is for the minutes. Then I told her that the 12 is 60 minutes and the 1 is 5 in minutes. When you are counting out the minutes you count by 5's. Then she asked what the dots between each number meant? I told her it was the minutes and showed her how between the 12 and 1 there are 5 dots equalling 5 minutes. That was why the 1 equalls 5 minutes. I explained that the 6 equals 30, together we counted from one to 6 by 5's. She commented saying that 6 was half of 12 and 30 was half of 60. I said yes! Then we looked at the clock on the worksheet. I asked, "What time do you think it is?" I told her to show me the hour hand, she pointed to it. I asked what number it went to? She said "It isn't on a number." I said, "Well it is almost to the 2 but since the hand has not touched 2 yet, it is still 1." Then I asked her to show me the munute hand and asked her how many minutes it is. She said , "It's on the 7 so 35. The time is 1:35." I replied, "How many minutes past 1 is it?" She said, "35!" I asked, "How many minutes until 2?" She thought then said, "25." After 2 more problems I knew she understood the concept.

The reason I put this intervention under subject matter is becuase I needed to know the central concept when I taught this lesson for my student to be able to understand. When I walked into the classroom I did not know I would be teaching this concept, and so had not prepared to teach it. After I was told I was given some time to think over how I would teach the concept and then pulled her to the back during math. Knowing the concept and having an idea on how to teach it, I was able to create meaningful learning experiences for her. Later throughout the day we continued practicing telling time. I was also able to creat and use manupulatives for the content to create a more meaningful intervention. As teachers, we need to have a central concept of all subjects, so that when we need to teach a lesson or back up on information we thought student/s might already know, we can create meaningful lessons for the students.

To Colour in color...

2009-03-03T20:15:00.001-08:00

While writing our breather assignment, I ran into a funny problem. In my poem I want to use the word color. It dawned on me I have see color spelt two different ways. Color and Colour. So which one should I use? Even as I type this when I spell the word "color" it highlights it in red telling me that the spelling is wrong. When I right clicked on it, it suggests the spelling of colour. So I decided to look up the difference in spelling.
According to all that I really found when I looked up the difference betweeen the words on google is the spelling. Other than spelling they mean the same thing. America is the only one who really spells color "C-O-L-O-R" everywhere else it is spelt colour. Has anyone else heard differently?

So many ways to use Parentheses

2009-02-25T18:43:00.000-08:00

I was sitting at the computer wondering what to talk about this time. I know I have grammar problems but I couldn't think of any. Finally I decided on parenthese. I went to google and found a website http://www.thefreedictionary.com/parentheses. Their definition of a parenthese is:

Either or both of the upright curved lines, ( ), used to mark off explanatory or qualifying remarks in writing or printing or enclose a sum, product, or other expression considered or treated as a collective entity in a mathematical operation.

So it is like what I used in my article, when I wrote the author Alfie Kohn (known author ad speaker on human development, education, and parenting.) I put the parenthese after the author to explain who he was. You can also use them to explain something such as:
My sister broke her arm, leg, and hip this last summer (she is a cluts), I wonder what she will go to the hospital for this year?

You use parenthese in math as well when you do order of operations like:
(x+3)(y+4)=?

You can use parenthese in a lot of different ways, I am glad I understand this now. I hopefully won't have as many run-on sentences.

To read too many grammer post....about to or too.

2009-02-03T21:45:00.000-08:00

The word "too" confuses me at times. When do you use it? What is it used for? I researched in on Google and this is what I found out:

I typed in the word "too" into the search engine. Google brought me the definition of the word "too" it means- Besides, Also, to an excessive degree. Some examples are:

"sell the horse too."

"She wanted to swim too"

You can find the definition at: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/too

To have or not to have a passive voice?

2009-01-28T20:43:00.000-08:00

In class today we learned of some things not to do while writing our essays. One of the things mentioned was to try and use an active voice, instead of a passive voice. Well I didn't really understand what a passive voice was so after class I was going to ask about it. When I was getting my things together and put away one of my other classmates asked the same question I had. What is a passive voice?
I looked up the definition of what a passive voice is on the website: http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsPassiveVoice.htm
It states that a passive voice is a voice that indicates that the subject is the patient or recipient of the action denoted by the verb. Just reading this definition wouldn't have helped me understand exactly whata passive voice is; I am glad Chelsi explained it after class, and that the other classmate asked the question. Chelsi explained it by showing an example.

"The mouse was caught by the cat." This is a passive voice. The mouse didn't get caught on its own. The cat was more active in the sentence than what the sentence makes it seem.
"The cat caught the mouse" would be active voice, you can easily picture this sentence and it gives it a stronger voice. The fewer of the passive voice words we use in our sentences thebetter our papers will be.

Other Education Cartoons

2009-01-25T19:36:00.000-08:00

Interresting, and some are funny. Each have a message, some I am still trying to figure out what they are driving at. What do you think?

Political Cartoon

2009-01-24T18:46:00.000-08:00

The first impression that I get from this political cartoon is how far technology has come. Has it helped or hindered the education feild? Their are arguments for and against technology. In this cartoon the teacher looks annoyed of technology, specifically cell phones. Judging by the math being done on the blackboard, I would say that this is Jr. High or High School. Students of all ages have cell phones in society; from kindergarten to 12th grade.

Some would say that cell phones are teaching children bad social skills. As this shows the student called the teacher on the cellphone to give the answer instead of raising her hand and answering outloud like the rest of her classmates. If you were to talk to teachers in the Jr. High and High School they would tell you about when the students use to walk around the school- they would do laps- they would be talking and laughing, socializing. Now since text messaging and ipods, and cell phones with both, students are now doing laps without talking or socializing unless it is through cell phones or e-mail.

This cartoon shows another issue with cell phones. That issue is spelling, students are using so many abbreviations for words, that they are forgetting how to spell the actual word. This is making it difficult for students to write a grammatically correct papers.

This cartoon also shows the worry parents have for their childrens education. Especially having their children learn proper english. My sisters are now using the acronyms in the speaking instead of saying the entire sentence. So these cartoons are making me wonder, what can teachers do to reach students today?

Grammar Post: The Semi Colon

2009-01-20T10:25:00.000-08:00

Sadly I forgot about the first grammar post until it was too late. But it seems like most of us are having problems with the wonderful semicolon. For me, I just never quite grasped the idea of the semicolon. How do you use it? When should you use it? Usually my past teachers let me do comma's but I feel like I overuse the comma and that sometimes I probably should have use the semicolon. Other times I would use the semicolon when I should have just put a comma.

When I type in semicolon into google, I found a site called comma vs. Semicolon. In it I realized that comma's and semicolon's are more similar than I thought. The comma is used to connect two independent clauses using these connecting words: and, or, but, so, for, yet, nor. Semicolon is similar, except instead of using the connecting words you would place the semicolon after the first independent clause then continue writing the second independent clause. Some examples I can come up with are:

I went to a sleep over; I stayed up all night.
My family and I went camping; it snowed the whole time.

You can find more examples and the explanation that I got at ths url: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_commacomp.html