With that said, we are anxious to attempt to integrate new and different learning/teaching strategies into our lessons and classes. The following are some of the changes we have or will be making in our classes:
- Integrate more student writing activities in lessons and assignments.
- Be more aware of the timing in lessons ("degree of retention" model). Use the first "prime-time" 20 minutes for teaching new material instead of using it for going over homework. Revise lesson plans to incorporate this model.
- Take more care and consideration when explaining the mathematical meaning behind the concepts being taught rather than just teaching the procedure.
The effects of making these changes to our classes:
- Through integrating more writing activities in lessons, students will be able to learn math concepts more effectively and develop critical-thinking and problem solving skills. Students will have a permanent record of their thoughts where they can reflect on them. Students will be better able to organize ideas, develop new ideas and solve problems. Students will become active participants in their learning. Some examples of success in the classroom by integrating more writing activities:
In Geometry, the writing is very technical and there has been a considerable amount time spent learning to read and write technically. Evidence of understanding exists when there is more detail emerging in their writings. This should translate to improved long-term memory retention.
The applied senior class creates chapter summaries. Each student picks out what they feel are the most important concepts of the chapter. As review for the test, students compare the summaries with each other and make changes accordingly.
- Following the recommendations of this book, we will be guiding our students in building a stronger conceptual base through the grade levels. This should increase students confidence and decrease their math anxiety about moving into more advanced, abstract topics.
- Students will be able to better connect with the material they are learning and will be able to apply it to different mathematical situations.
- Changing the timing of our lessons to incorporate the "degree of retention" model, students will be learning new concepts during their "prime learning" time. This should help them make connections and have better retention of the concepts taught.
Our recommendations to other educators:
- Educators of all disciplines can see that if students cannot make sense of what they are being taught then they will not be able to make connections to what they already know.
- All teachers of mathematics should read this book. It really sheds a light on how students come to us with such different strengths and abilities in mathematics, based on the workings of the brain and how any difficulties have been addressed in the younger, developmental stages. According to the research presented in this book, the important work in development happens when students are quite young. We can hope that teachers of elementary students utilize these strategies, when there is a better chance to make an impact. Regardless, we, as math teachers of 8 - 12 grade, can come to our students with more understanding of the challenges students face in learning mathematics and try to plan our lessons to maximize their learning.
- As educators, we should continue to investigate the research in our discipline and attempt to integrate new and different learning/teaching strategies. Then we should take the time to reflect on what worked and improve on what did not work well with our students.
- According to the author, research indicates that students have difficulty learning too many different concepts in too little time. One of the concerns voiced by the participants in this group is that there are still too many topics in many of our math courses. We wonder if the folks at the state education level read any of the current research.
