Strategies Used

The below are the strategies which I used this year.  I will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each and their effectiveness in my classroom:

Gamification: 

Gamification worked really well for my students.  They love engaging with games and competing with their friends.  I can introduce rigorous games that students enjoy playing while still working on their skills in mathematics.  It is a fun way to incorporate collaboration and the students' love of competition.  The only drawback is that these games take a long time to design because I like to make sure that they are still content-rich while still being fun. 

Collaborative Learning:

Collaborative learning is something that I use all the time.  Most of my students are very sociable and talkative.  I typically present students with a problem that they haven't seen before and ask them to use manipulatives to solve.  Then I instruct them to work together and talk to each other about their ideas. When they talk to each other to solve problems, they are able to bounce different ideas off of each other, correct each other's mistakes, and use their different strengths and weaknesses to solve the problem.  This strategy works really well in my small groups and makes learning meaningful to my students.  The only drawback is the occasional rowdy conversations, which are typically easily redirected. 

Life-Based Learning:

Life-based learning is very valuable to my students.  When I can connect a topic to their lives, they are much more engaged in it.  For example, to learn about area and perimeter, I play furniture store with my students.  I give them some qualifications that the piece of furniture must meet (e.g. I need a table that has a perimeter of ___ inches.) and then we go around the school and try to locate the proper piece of furniture to meet my needs.  Then we discuss how they can apply this learning to their lives, i.e. buying furniture or measuring for furniture. This encourages the students to think deeply about their content and why it may be meaningful to them.

Incorporating Interests: 

To better understand my students, at the beginning of the year I typically give my students an interest survey which asks them about their likes and interests.  I try my hardest to incorporate those interests into my mathematics curriculum. For example, I have a student who LOVES Minecraft and struggles with the concept and computation of multiplication.  To help with this struggle, I designed an activity on the Nintendo Switch's Minecraft and plugged the Switch into the ClearTouch Board so that we could practice multiplication using the area model together.  He loved this activity and it really helped him to grasp the concept in a way that met his needs. 

There are many more minute strategies that I like to incorporate, so if you would like to learn more about my favorite teaching strategies, feel free to reach out to me.  I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have.