My last blog mentioned Bump It Up (BIU) walls in the classroom, and Bansho provides the teacher as well as their students with the opportunity to create and assess student work in real time in an inclusive and cooperative educational environment. It focuses more on what Dan Meyer calls "patient problem solving" (see video below for more information on this concept), which is having students use their knowledge of math and how it works to problems in order to clarify students' understanding of how math works, and why it is meaningful.Anyways, I wanted to post a blog about this to provide anyone who is interested with these resources to see how they can implement Bansho into their mathematics programs, and why it is a great tool for improving not only student success/understanding, but to help reshape/redefine the aging textbook/linear mathematic programs from the past. As Dan Meyer states, "Math needs a makeover", and here in Ontario we are doing this one classroom at a time!
I got a taste of board writing during one of my teaching placements when I went abroad to Stornoway Scotland. All the classrooms had a whole class set of small whiteboards or "Show-me boards" as the teachers called them, and they made great use of them. The students were always very excited to use them to share their answers and the whole atmosphere of openness in sharing answers seems to have made the children less afraid to be wrong. When they made a mistake they were quick to realize it and were more than happy to smile it off and learn something, rather than feel badly about it. And that's only if they got so far as holding up their wrong answer, most of the time a classmate nearby would correct them quietly because there was a sort of camaraderie in getting the right answer for perceived brownie points with the teacher. That really fostered a sense of togetherness in the class.
ReplyDeleteThe classrooms over there also made use of clustered seating, usually in groups of 2x3 desks turned to face each other, rather than the column and row individual seating we so often see here in Canada. I found this helped with class morale, and worked quite well with the whiteboards.
I got a taste of board writing during one of my teaching placements when I went abroad to Stornoway Scotland. All the classrooms had a whole class set of small whiteboards or "Show-me boards" as the teachers called them, and they made great use of them. The students were always very excited to use them to share their answers and the whole atmosphere of openness in sharing answers seems to have made the children less afraid to be wrong. When they made a mistake they were quick to realize it and were more than happy to smile it off and learn something, rather than feel badly about it. And that's only if they got so far as holding up their wrong answer, most of the time a classmate nearby would correct them quietly because there was a sort of camaraderie in getting the right answer for perceived brownie points with the teacher. That really fostered a sense of togetherness in the class.
ReplyDeleteThe classrooms over there also made use of clustered seating, usually in groups of 2x3 desks turned to face each other, rather than the column and row individual seating we so often see here in Canada. I found this helped with class morale, and worked quite well with the whiteboards.