Text Set Collection #2: Rate of Change

Articles:

Connecting Research to Teaching: Slope, Rate of Change, and Steepness: Do Students Understand these Concepts?
NCTM, March 2010, Volume 103 Issue 7,
This article's intended audience is high school math teachers. It has a reading level 10.5. This article investigates how teachers introduce their students to the concept of rate of change since research has shown that many students struggle with comprehending rates of change. Although this article follows an AP Calculus class, I chose it because students not fully understanding rates of change is not an isolated phenomena to Calculus. This problem exists in my Algebra 1 classes, and this is a great resource for teachers to counteract this dilemma.

How to Use the Slope Intercept Form (in Algebra)
http://www.wikihow.com/Use-the-Slope-Intercept-Form-(in-Algebra)
This article is intended to help Algebra 1 students who are struggling with slope intercept form. It has a reading level of 6.7, and it is organized into 5 different methods for representing a linear function into the slope intercept form. I chose this because it is a very easy read that explicit writes out each step for students to see. This section is very important because it makes up about 50% of the EOC for Algebra 1. For each step there is one paragraph describe the process.

Slope of a Line: The Angle form the Horizontal- Rise Over Run
http://math.about.com/library/weekly/aa120502a.htm
This article is intended for high school students who are just learning about slopes. The reading level is 5.1, and this article explains to the students how to calculate your slope from two points. Moreover, it explains the difference between a slope of 0 and an undefined slope. Also, I really like that this article explains that the tangent of an angle is equal to your slope. This is a concept not often taught in a textbook, but it is a very rich idea. I chose this article because I think it does a good job describing to the readers the significance of slope, and it provides some great really world problems.

Books:

E-Z Algebra

Authors: Prindle, Anthony; Prindle, Katie

Ages: 9th grade and up

This book is intended to be a self-guided manual for students and adults who need additional help with Algebra. It consists of notes, quizzes, tests, answers, charts and other diagrams that are geared toward providing a detailed explanation of how Algebra works. I chose this book because I think it is a great resource for people that learn at their own pace. It might be more geared toward adults and high-school graduates, but reviews say that it has been very beneficial for homeschooled students.

Algebra Survival Guide: A Conversional Guide for the Thoroughly Befuddled

Author: Rappaport, Josh

Ages: 7th grade and up

This book makes math fun again! It is written similar format as a conversation. It uses humor to make to question/answer style entertaining. It covers a wide range of topics that tend to be the more challenging material in Pre-Algebra and Algebra. I chose it because I think it is important for students to have a wide variety of reading material, and this is not your traditional math textbook. Too often textbooks are very boring and dull, but this book tries to give a little bit of life to Algebra.

Painless Algebra 3rd Edition

Authors: Long, Lynette Ph.D

Age: 7th grade and up

This book is another book that tries to present Algebra in a untraditional manner, it tries to make it fun and entertaining. It covers a large range of topics and has a large selection of entertaining activities. I choose this book because once again I think it is important for students to be exposed to a large variety of text, especially if the text makes math look cool to students. This book is more geared toward middle school and high school students, but I think it is able to be used by adults who are learning Algebra on their own.

Algebra Success In 20 Minutes a Day

Authors: LearningExpress Editors

Ages: 9th grade and up

This book is a great resource for students who are practicing algebra at their own at home (or anywhere). It is very direct in its explanations and provide ample amount of practice problems to help students learn the various topics. It does not offer extensive explanations. This book appears to be used more like a workbook rather than a textbook; however, the activities seem to be very enriching for the various topics. I chose this book because I think it is direct enough to help my students who get caught up in extensive details.

A-Plus Notes for Beginning Algebra: Pre-Algebra and Algebra 1
I'm So adorable

Authors: Yang, Rong

Ages: 8th grade and up

This book is a great resource for students who are learning Algebra and students who are in Pre-Algebra (although some of the reviews said that this is more appropriate for intermediate to advance pre-algebra students instead of beginners). I chose this book because I think it does a good job explaining the basics of Algebra while also doing a good job at explaining the more complicated material. It is full of examples and word problems that are accompanied by a summary explaining everything that is important to the problems or theorems. All in all I think it is a great resource.




Webpages:

http://www.regentsprep.org/regents/math/algebra/ac1/rate.htm
This webpage is a great resource for students who are learning Algebra 1. The reading level is 5.7 and I chose it because it is a wonderful reference page if students need additional help at home. It requires no adult supervision (if you trust a kid with the internet). It has powerful visual aids that explicit explains what is slope. The text is separated by font style and color to differentiate really important information. It goes through several examples and explains step by step how to solve the problem.

http://www.mesacc.edu/~marfv02121/readings/average/
This webpage is intended for college students, but I think it may be suitable for an Algebra 1 honors class. The reading level is 7.3 and it is very organized, thus making it easy to read. I chose this webpage because it does a very good job describing the average rate of change as a function, which is a very powerful thought for a student learning algebra. It provides several examples of rates of change that is familiar to the reader. It models for the reader how to solve several problems. It lists all the steps for the first example; however, the rest of the examples are less detailed.

http://www.sparknotes.com/math/calcab/applicationsofthederivative/section1.rhtml
This webpage provides notes for AB Calculus students. There are several webpages separated into various topics such as terms, applications, and example problems. The reading level is 9.9. I chose this site because rate of change is not unique to just Algebra. It plays a very important role in Calculus as well. This site explains the difference between instantaneous and average rate of change. It gives the classic example of position, velocity, and acceleration as different rate of change. It does not go into great detail explaining the underlying concepts; therefore, if a student struggles with reading, then this site will be challenging. However, it is a great resource for students learning calculus and possibly Algebra 1 honors.

http://www.algebra-class.com/rate-of-change.html
This webpage is a helpful resource for students learning Algebra 1. The reading level is 5.7, and like the previous websites, this is a reference page students can access at home if they need additional help. It starts with an essential question "Why do I need to find the slope of a line?" It provides real-world problems that can be modeled by a linear function. I chose it because it has 4 good examples, and it has a video clip embedded into the webpage that provides even more explanation of calculating the slope of a line. The only catch is the webpage designer liked to use a lot of red text, which does not appeal to my eyes.

http://clinton.k12.mo.us/cms/lib2/MO01001720/Centricity/Domain/385/2.2%20Slope%20and%20Rate%20of%20Change.pdf
This webpage is intended for Algebra 2 students. I was unable to directly check the text for the reading level, but if I was allowed to guess I would say it is close to a 6th grade reading. It has arrows connecting terms to their definitions. It has only one page of notes and the rest of the text is word problems with example work solving each question. I chose this webpage because I think it is always important for students to have good direct notes along with example problems that follow the same format as the type of questions the students will be tested over. It is very easy to follow along as you read. All in all, it is a good webpage for students to study with at home.

Reading Reflection # 11

Dear peoples,
The main idea behind Teaching Learners to Think, Read, and Write More Effectively in Content Subjects by Richard C. Sinatra is in order to make students better thinkers, readers, and writers, teachers must implement an effective construct that utilizes text structure, concept mapping, and a shift in teaching-style. Sinatra claims that a teacher can implement this construct in three easy steps. The first step is modeling for the students; however, Sinatra does point out that one should be considerate of the fact that concept maps are appropriate after students have been introduced to all the topics. For some teachers, this can be a great closure activity after only one lesson. However, other teachers may say this activity is most appropriate after two or three lessons. Either way the beauty behind a concept map is that the students mental arrange ideas and make connections between the ideas for themselves. The teacher is there to help direct the students, not give answers. A concept map is a great review activity. In fact, tomorrow during my evaluation my students will create a concept map about multiple representations of linear equations. I chose this activity because it is open-ended in the sense that the students can connect the ideas however they pleasure (even if it is incorrect). Also, it is a great activity to start a classroom discussion. In fact, I think this article left out a major aspect of being a student, speaking. The same construct would benefit the students' ability to communicate effectively along with the three other skills the author mentions. The second stage of implementation is guided practice. This goes back to the idea that a teacher is more like a navigator through the land of knowledge, but it is the students job to make the discoveries between the ideas. The teacher can continuously have students write a paragraph or two about a topic. Of course it is important to ask to write about a purposeful question. The hope is that students will begin to practice this construct on their own for future use. The author points out that this construct has proven to benefit students at all grade levels. Therefore, if you are a teacher you should probably try this strategy in your classroom. The data shows that not only does it improve the students' ability to think read and write, but it also has a positive impact on the different content areas too. I personally like it for a closure to a unit, but at any rate give it a try.

Sincerely,
Me (a genuinely good guy)

Reading Reflection # 10

Hello and welcome back to another exciting issue of typing about what I read,

After watching The Millennials: The Dumbest Generation or the Next Great Generation, I agree with both speakers to a certain extent. I believe that students today have the potential to be the next great generation; however, students today are able to fall through the cracks and become possible some of the dumbs people ever. Mark Bauerlein points out that there has been a drastic drop in reading amongst people between the ages of 18-23 despite the increase in the number of public libraries, schools and universities, and the Internet. For many, the primary source of the Internet is  a venue for social networking. More and more, high school seniors are deemed not ready for college, and more entering freshmen are taking remedial classes. The various forms of technology in every one's everyday life is continuously distracting students. The accumulation of these factors puts students today at the risk of being the dumbest generation. However, it is also true that because of the continuous advancements made in technology and science, students today can become the next great generation. Neil Howe explains that there has actual be a steady positive change in almost every category for today's students.
There has been an increase in voters between the ages of 18- 30 in recent years. Also, there has been a decrease in anti-social movements and violence, while categories such as child-parent relationships and community service have seen a steady increase over the years. Howe claims that kids are smarter today than ever before because of the emergence of technology in classrooms. So are students become dumbing? Well statistics can be tricky because Howe only spoke in terms of percentages, but there are more people today than there was during the 70's and 80's. Therefore, percentages can be misleading. Also, there are more students attending college then ever before in the U.S., but should all of these students attended college? Perhaps the reason why there are more students needing to take remedial classes is because there are many students who should not go to college that do go because our society views college as a necessity to be successful. If technology is distracting our students, then why are so many schools going 1-1? Howe points out that we are always comparing today's students the standards of students in previous generations. However, it is impossible to see how student's from the past would perform under our current standards in education. Howe also made an interested example when he compared science fairs from the 50's and today. Back then science fairs had volcanoes that foamed over the top, and today students create machines that do a number of various operations. Also, games cannot be such a bad thing when they are becoming more and more popular as a method of teaching. The SIMS is a much more accurate way to teach kids about life than the board game Life. There is a steady trend worldwide that kids today are much more informed than any other group of students throughout history. However, this really is about the smarter kids of today, because the students on the bottom of the spectrum still could be considered the dumbest kids ever.

Web Resource #2: TenMarks

Attention all blog readers,

I have a great online resource you can use in your classrooms. It is called TenMarks.com, and I am currently using this in my Algebra 1 classroom. This site does require you to purchase a license, but if you can convince your school to buy the students a subscription, it is a great tool to use to help get assessment data about your students. You can easily create a class roster for each of your sections, and you can assign specific problems that are centered on a particular standard. When you login into the website it displays the class results, and it shows you the distribution of comprehension amongst your classes. I use it for my Algebra 1 students, but it is designed for all grade levels up to Algebra II. We currently use this at least every other Friday, and the kids like it. It is very easy to navigate through and it offers hint and video tutorials if you answer a question incorrectly (do be warned that the man in the video has a very thick accent and students complain about the clarity of his voice). The site is very professional and has minimal advertisement. It does not have lots of flashy colors or any other kind of distraction. Also, it requires minimal adult supervision. Once students have there login information they can hop right on and start their assignments. The data it gives you does an excellent job representing the students' comprehension of the material. The students like working on the site, but to be honest it does not seem very engaging. It is just question after question. It has a built in library of standards for each subject, which is pretty nice. There is not anything I can readily find about this site that I do not like. If your school chose to buy a bunch of licenses and you are wanting to have a relaxing Friday afternoon, then get a TenMarks account and assign your students a few standards to practice. This way everyone is happy and students are still practicing math.

Signing out,
Michael Vargas (Me)

Text Set Collection #1 : Functions

Websites

• http://www.cut-the-knot.org/do_you_know/FunctionMain.shtmlThis is a great website for helping students 

I chose this website because I think it is a great resource for students to read to develop an understanding of the history of mathematics. This page explains the importance of functions in mathematics, and it describes what a function does fairly well. The targeted audience is Algebra 1 students, and the reading level is 11.8. This can be used to introduce students to the idea of functions, and it can be used for a project about functions. It can also be a great chance to incorporate history into a math class.

• http://www.ixl.com/math/algebra-1

This website was created for providing additional help for students. Therefore, the target audience is students. The website is divided by grade level (1-8, algebra, geometry, etc.), and each section contains all the skills associated with each subject. Each skill has a set of questions that that assess the students' comprehension of the skill. The problems, on average, are close to a 7th grade reading leveling. I chose this website because it is a great tool for students to use outside of the classroom if they need additional help with a topic.  

• http://www.algebra-class.com/algebra-functions.html

This website offers additional information about functions for students. It can be used as a reference page with great visuals for example problems. It is a very simple read, the reading level is 6.9, and the author explains things in a very simple fashion for students to understand. I chose this website because of how easy it is for students to read, since students would access this more than likely at home (where I cannot help any misconceptions they may have). It gives examples of equations that are and are not functions. 

• http://www.purplemath.com/modules/fcns.htm

This website is another great page for additional help about functions for students. It provides many great visual aids showing the mapping from your domain to your range. I chose this resource because of the emphasis it has on domain and range. The reading level is 5.1 and the target audience is Algebra students. Once again, I chose this webpage because of how easy it is too read (students can understand this at home without any support), and because it does a great job explaining that a function has exactly one output for each input. 

• http://www.sparknotes.com/testprep/books/newsat/powertactics/algebra/chapter2section7.rhtml

I chose this website for several reasons. This website is intended to be for students preparing for the SAT. It has a reading level of roughly 5.4 (it is easy to read). The writer is able to describe concepts such as functions and compound functions in a very simple, but powerful, manner. I think this is great for students who have poor reading skills. The second reason is because this website also provides SAT test taking strategies along with the basics of functions. One of the strategies is analyze the problem to see what type of question it is (the article describes three major type of problems found on the SAT). These analytical skills are a vital skill to be successful at math.  

Textbooks

• Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and SenseMaking in Algebra

http://www.nctm.org/uploadedFiles/Math_Standards/13494_chapter.pdf 

The targeted audience for this textbook is Algebra teachers. The reading level is 11.3. I choose this textbook (chapter 6 in particular) because it goes into depth about how teachers should teach about functions. This chapter has great tasks for the students, and it lists the different methods of implementing it in a classroom. This is a great resource for new teachers (and veteran teachers) to learn about different ways to present the information to students. It also goes into great detail about other aspects about teaching mathematics (it is not just limited to functions). 

• Prentice Hall Foundations Algebra 1 Student Edition

This textbook is one of the textbooks used in an Algebra 1 class in Knox County, Tennessee. The reading level varies throughout the text, but it is as high as 12 in some areas and 5 and other areas. This is the textbook I use in my classroom, and and it is a great reference tool. The targeted audience is students (unless you have the teacher edition). It has plenty of example problems, visual aids, explanations of each aspect of a function. This is more than likely the first source my students will encounter if they need to help, hence why I chose it.

• Glenco Mathematics Algebra 1 Tennessee Student Edition

This is another textbook used in Algebra 1 classes in Knox County, Tennessee. The target audience is Algebra 1 students. Similar to the previous textbook, the reading level varies throughout the book. It can be as high as 12 in some areas, and other areas have a much lower reading level. This book is very user friendly. It has lots of visual aids (charts, diagrams, pictures) and plenty of example problems. It is very clear and direct; therefore, I chose this textbook to be a part of mine text set because it is a great reference tool for my students to use (or any student in Knox County). 

• Algebra 1 Grades 9-12: McDougal Littell High School Math Tennessee Edition

This is the third textbook approved by Knox County to be used in an Algebra 1 classroom. The targeted audience is students for the student edition and teachers for the teacher edition. Like the previous two textbooks, the reading level varies. It can be as high as 12 or as low as 5, but I would say it averages about 10. Once again, this is a great reference tool for students to use if they are struggling or need to look up some information again. It has numerous examples that have commentary on each step and visual aids that are accompanied with descriptions explaining the significance of the visual aid. I chose this textbook because Knox county has already approved it to be used in any Algebra 1 classroom.

Lecture Notes

• Math 117 Lecture 8 supplement: Function history and terminology

http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~castelln/M117/lecture8_math117.pdf

This is an excellent resource for students. It serves multiple purposes. The first purpose is it can be an additional reference for students who might be struggling with the material. It has great examples, and it is incorporates history into a math class. It has a lot of math terminology accompanied with great descriptions of each word.The second purpose is it can serve as a model for how to take good notes. The target audience is students, and the reading level is 8.5.

Articles

• Developmental Algebra with Functions as the Underlying Theme

https://people.math.osu.edu/laughbaum.6/papers/dev_alg_with_function_as_underlying_theme.pdf

This article is a great resource for teachers. The reading level is 11.7, and the target audience is teachers. This article provides a lot of data about two different approaches a teacher can take when teaching about relationships. There is the equation approach and there is the function approach, and the article lists all the advantages of the function approach. I chose this article because as a new teacher,I am constantly looking for teaching methods that can help my students, and this article has a lot of data about effectives ways to teach students algebra. 

• Algebra Aerobics

http://www.nctm.org/publications/article.aspx?id=30659

This article is for Algebra teachers who are about to teach system of equations.  The target audience is teachers, and the reading level is 8.9. This article is about solving systems of linear functions which are all functions. This article provides the reader with an interesting hands-on approach to teach students how to analyze a system of linear functions. I chose this article because as a new teacher, I am always looking for a way to make my lesson more engaging, and this article has a great task to help me. 

• Methods To Solve System of Linear Equations

http://ezinearticles.com/?Methods-To-Solve-System-Of-Linear-Equations&id=5495875

The target audience for this article is students. This online article has a reading level of 11.5. I chose this article because it is very direct how how to solve a system of linear function by the three different methods. This is a great resource for students who have a fair understand of functions since it is very direct. Systems of linear equations are very closely related to functions since for each input there is exactly one output. I really like that the author does mention the three dimensional case instead of the standard two dimensional system, because this gives students a better understanding that a system can be solved if the number of variables is the same as the number of given equations.. This is a great reference page for students if they happen to forget how to solve a system by any of the three methods.

• Linear Equations - How To Predict The Nature Of Solutions!

http://ezinearticles.com/?Linear-Equations---How-To-Predict-The-Nature-Of-Solution!&id=5525937 

The target audience for this article is students. This article has a reading level of 8.9. It is a simple read, and it is very direct. I chose this article because once again all linear equations are functions; however, this examines the functions to determine if there are 0, 1, or infinitely many solutions. This is a skill I have stressed in my class. It is very important for students to have a strong grasp on this idea, therefore I added it to the text set because it is easy to read (it is not confusing) and it explains the process very well.

• The Function Concept

         http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Functions.html

I really like this article! The target audience is students and people who love math. It has a reading level of 12.0. I chose this article because I think it is important for students to understand the history of Algebra. One question that always comes up in an Algebra class is, "When am I ever going to use this?" This article explains how other people applied Algebra (functions in particular) to their everyday lives. This article has a cross-curricular connect with history, and this article can be used for a project or presentation. This also introduces students to many different types of functions, many of which they will not encounter in secondary school. This will broaden the students' math horizon. 

Reading Reflection 7: More Reading Stuff

Dear readers (all two of you),
Tierney and Readance's chapter on Meaning Vocabulary goes into great detail describing 7 strategies to promote students' vocabulary. The main idea is if a student is unfamiliar with words he or she encounters while reading, then he or she will not be able to read well. I agree with this statement, but I do not necessarily agree with the converse of the statement. There are many factors that can prevent a student from reading well. At any rate, the other main idea of this chapter is that good teachers are effective at teaching the relevant vocabulary to the topic they are teaching. This is true across the board in any subject at any level. The seven different strategies were possible sentences, list-group-label, contextual redefinition, feature analysis, world map, vocabulary self-collection, and Levin's keyword method. The authors go through and provide the purpose for using this strategy along with the rationale, the attended audience, a description of the steps to implement it, and any comments or concerns that accompany each one. Each of these strategies serves its own purpose, but I do not think that all of these are highly effective in my Algebra class such as Contextual Redefinition. Most math terms are note easily guessed from context; however, other strategies such as Feature Analysis most certainly have a place in a high school math class. I like the cognitive demand this strategy expects of the students. They must categorize all the new information in comparison to everything they have already learned. This will most certainly help students retain information and recall it when they need it. This is a vital skill to be good at math since math builds on itself. Now that I have read this chapter, I realize that vocabulary is much more important than I thought. In particular, the strategies used to teach vocabulary can also help my students remember the material better, and who would not love for that to happen?

Reading Reflection 6: Help for Struggling Readers

The main focus of this chapter is how teachers can help students become better readers since students often are unable to visualize the words they read. This might be a result of the fact that many students lack enough background knowledge to make mental pictures of what they are reading, or they do not know how to determine what is important and what is not important when reading a passage. One suggested strategy is to have students act out a scene or draw a picture of a scene before reading the assigned material. I find this interesting because this type of activity usually is implemented after students have finish reading; however, it makes since to try to get your students involved in thinking about the reading before actually reading since good readers are continuously thinking while reading. Another reoccurring problem in my classroom is students do not want to think for themselves. Therefore, teachers need to encourage student seek answers to their questions instead of waiting for the teacher to simply give them a correct answer. By promoting students to take responsibility of monitoring their own learning, they will learn their strengths and weaknesses. This will ultimately allow the student to clear up any confusion he or she might be experiencing with the material (this is true for all content areas). In math, there is a huge focus on students being able to analyze a contextual problem and make sense of all the information presented in the problem. Therefore, it is very important for students to be able to determine what is information is important. Also, most real world scenarios can be modeled through mathematics. Thus, being able to visualize a contextual problem is an essential skill to be able to solve these types of problems. Hence, it is very important for students to develop these reading skills in order to be successful in their math classes.

Reading Reflection #5: Chapters 5 & 6 Tovani

The main themes from these chapters are when assigning reading assignments, you must ensure that students understand their purpose for reading in order for the reading activity to be successful and you must reassure that when students are reading that they have tools for holding thinking in order for them to remember their thoughts and reuse them later. Chapter 5 goes into detail on how to define the students' purpose for reading before diving into the material. It compares and contrasts the difference between the different voices a good reader experiences when reading (reciting voice and conversation voice), which are heavily centered on whether or not there is some sort of constructed meaning that grabs the reader's interest. It also investigated the notion of using a comprehension constructor to guide students through thinking about text; however, this was further developed in chapter 6. One idea that I thought was interesting from chapter 6 is "they have been taught that it is the teacher's job to ask questions and the students' job is to answer them" (pg. 68). Thus, it is important to teach students several tools they can use to hold onto their thinking so they can use it later. One major focus was how to effectively write down notes while reading. Either you have students write in their book or on some sticky notes, but which every route your students decide to journey down it is important for them to construct some sort of meaning. This once again ties back into the idea that you must set a purpose for students to read prior to assigning them a reading assignment. I am slightly concerned about how I can implement these into a math class because a math textbook is not the most interesting reading. Although the book does mention that not every time a student reads is for fun (sometimes we have to reading boring factual information), I still think that my students would be stuck with their reciting voice and not tap into their conversation voice when reading. However, I would like to incorporate this into my classroom because I agree that it is important for students to learn how to read boring stuff before they go to college.  

Reading Reflection #4 Subjects Matter Ch. 3 & 4

Chapters 3 and 4 are centered around a common theme, textbooks. In chapter 3 we investigated why textbooks are not enough to drive an entire class. There are several shortcomings of textbooks. One major flaw is there is simply too much information in textbooks. This makes it hard for readers to differentiate micro-details from overarching concepts. Also, textbooks are reference books, which do not read the same way was a narrative. They simply just house large amounts of information. We expect students to read and retain the information in them, but not only are they hard to read but the design of each page is distracting. To make matters even worse, textbooks are often outdated and contain major typos. The author recognizes that despite all of these shortcomings, textbooks still have an important role in many classes. Therefore, the author wanted to inform the readers of several criteria that teachers should consider when deciding which textbook to use; however, the author is makes it clear that our entire curriculum should not be dictated by a textbook (which are often aligned for the state standards of Texas and California which can differ from other states). Chapter 4 builds off of the idea that textbooks are not enough to teach students. It suggests that as an alternate to textbooks, teachers should include an array of literature from different genres that include news stories, primary and secondary sources, magazines, trade books, and webpages. Our selections should include fiction, non-fiction, contemporary works, the classics, easy reads, hard reads, short passages, and long passages to ensure that there is material for all reading levels. The idea with these enriching texts is that students can benefit from getting a deeper understanding of specific material. These can be overarching concepts that the teacher really wants to drill home. If our intention is to prepare students to be good readers, then let's give them the same material that good readers encounter everyday. Students should be reading something everyday. After reading these chapters, I realize that I do not have to teach students the way I was taught. In fact, I wish I can go back and attend a school that used multiple reading sources. I do not want to discourage students from reading by assigning them 2 chapters of reading out of a textbook (haha that's a sly joke). Instead, I want them to learn to love to read. That's why I would like to implement this idea in my classroom, and luckily the authors provided me with a large list of reading selections that I can use in my classroom. Thank you!

Reading Reflection #3 Subjects Matter

I really like how in Chapter 5 Daniels & Zemelman provides a giant list of strategies that an instructor can implement in his or her classroom to help students become effective readers. They categorized each of the strategies as activities that come before, during, or after reading (some can be used at multiple points throughout the assignment). Although each method differs from the others, each method was purposefully designed to enhance certain skills in each section. All of the before reading activities have a common purpose to build on the students' prior knowledge to build a foundation for them to reflect on while reading. A whole class discussion centered around the central themes of the passage can be conducted to get the students' gears turning. A benefit to this approach is students hear what other students know about a particular topic. This provides an opportunity for each student to hear an idea they might not have thought about on their own, which can spark an interest in the student about the topic. The during reading activities helps students organize their thoughts while reading the assignment. This is important because students will need to understand the connections between all the central themes later on in the post-reading activity. Coding text is a great example of a strategy students can use to build their organizational skills. This is a strategy I would like to use in my math classroom. I am currently trying to get students to understand contextual problems and form the appropriate equations from the provided information. I want my students to develop a habit of identifying important information by some sort of code they have created. It can be either highlighting with different colors for different reasons or symbols that have an assigned purpose. The after reading strategies are designed to have students reflect over the reading assignment. Whether this is have some sort oral or written dialogue, it has students making sense of the reading. Reading is useless if you can't explain what you just read; therefore, these strategies are very important. Most of these strategies give the students some freedom in their own reflection. I think this is a benefit to the students because as the class discusses their work with each other, students can still see how other students approach a similar question that had to prescribed method for answering it. All in all, these strategies are great tools that I can easily use in my lessons to help me with my content.

Web Resource Review

The web page I found is http://www.ixl.com/math/algebra-1. This website is intended to provide additional help in Math and Language Arts for grades K-12. It is very organized, and it separates content based on grade level.  I selected the Algebra 1 category which is commonly taken by 9th graders. The website explicitly states the number of skills in each subset. Algebra 1 covers 270 skills. When you click on the link to the content material it is once again very organized. Each of the skills is grouped into different categories, and each of those categories lists all the associated skills used in those types of problems. If you click on a particular skill, you will be directed to a page of practice problems. The format is multiple choice answers and there can be more than one correct answer. Each sequential question is based on your performance of the previous question (if you get them all right, they keep getting harder) . In the event that you answer a problem incorrectly, a pop up appears that explains why your answer is incorrect and it shows you the correct answer. You must click a button that says 'I got this' to continue on with the questions. On the right hand side of the screen, it keeps a running tally of how many problems you have attempted, and the percentage you have answered correctly. After attempting 20 question a pop-up screen says you have reached your daily practice limit, and the only way to continue on is to sign up for a membership or way a day. Despite this annoyance, there is virtually no advertisement on the web page. The website design is not distracting, and it is very readable. Assuming that a student had a membership to this website, this would be a great resource for students to practice math either at home or at school. Since it is separated by categories, students can pick specific topics that they struggle with in class, and they can work at their own pace. It is very easy to navigate through this website, thus adult supervision is minimal. All in all, I think this is a great website (if you are a member).

Readability

I choose an online textbook for Algebra 1. The book is Understanding Algebra 1 by James W. Brennan. I chose a section from Chapter 5 which is about the solutions of a system of equations. Also, I chose to use the Flesch Method to determine the readability of the section. The statistics that popped up on my screen said that out of the 794 words in the section, there is 8 % passive sentences. Also, the Flesch Reading Ease is 56.7, and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is 10.1. Since this is usually a class taught to freshmen (and sometimes eighth graders) this is a little bit surprised that the reading level is a whole grade level ahead. On average there were about 4 sentences per paragraph, and there were about 20 words per sentence.

Reflection #1

After reading The Early Catastrophe, I too believe that the first three years of a child's life is the most important time frame to learn a language. I have always been under the impression that genetics and socio-economic status have a strong correlation with a person's overall intelligence, but I was still surprised when I read the outcomes of Betty Hart and Todd Risley's research.  The part that truly surprised me was the ratio or praise and prohibition that children of the three distinct subcategories of the SES experienced in their homes. Provided that the researcher's extrapolation of their data is correct, the alarming rate of 1 encouragement to 2 discouragements for child on welfare should raise red flags to parents. We need to be very careful about how we interact with children at such a young age! All children learn to talk and act properly in any household, but we have seen that there are certain trends that will have a more positive effect on a child's vocabulary than others.

The article Reading Supports for All is full of useful advice for helping ELL students. As teachers, it is our responsibility to identify the needs of our students, support the students as they develop and apply their new knowledge, and for us to evaluate their mastery of the new knowledge. Therefore, if we have an ELL student (or any student who is performing below level in a content area) we must tailor our instruction to help meet the student's needs. This is not to say that we will just half the work load because the student is unable to read as much as the other students. Instead, we select an appropriate amount of work that still encompasses the key concepts that we want our students to gain at the end of an exercise. It is not that an ELL student is less smart than a student who is proficient at English. In fact, the ELL student may be using a much more complex thought process to read in a non-native language; however, the ELL student may just need a little more SRE's to help learn the skills that a native English speaker might pick up faster.

Lastly, after reading chapter 7 in Subjects Matter the phrase classroom environment has a new level of importance in my mind. From my personal experiences in the classroom (both as a student and as an instructor), I have noticed that a class is much more productive when there is a positive classroom environment. When students have autonomy in their classroom, they feel appreciated as a person with opinions. If they are under the impression that the instructor does not care about them, they are much more likely to shut off which leads to no learning taking place. Therefore, by implementing some of the strategies that are listed in chapter 7, we can have our students feel safe to take a risk to learn something new. Moreover, the more often we can incorporate activities such as a Jigsaw presentation or different stations around the round we are also increasing each student's individual accountability for his or her own learning, which was always our end goal.