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Craft Lessons pgs. 105-138

The closing pages of this book cover many questions and answers about the writing lessons.  I personally found these questions and answers to be very helpful.  This section gives suggestions on how to implement the mini lessons into your existing curriculum.  The closing pages also give a very useful list of childrens literature with which to aid in your writing lessons.  This book has given me a wealth of ideas and guidance. 

Craft Lessons Teaching Writing

Pages 14-43 delt specifically with writing in Kindergarten through 2nd grades.  The writing is presented to the students through mini-lessons the help the child to develope good reading and writing practices early on.  The lessons are laid out with the materials, and resource items that would be needed.  There are even sections on how to teach these lessons. The book states that students should be able to retell stories that they have written, and should use picture books to enhance their setting and character in each story.  Pesonally, teaching writing is an area that I feel that I can improve on as an educator and find the information in this book to be very useful. 

 

 

Craft Lessons: Teaching Writing K-8 pgs. 1-13

The book Craft Lessons begins by touching on the 3 steps to writing.  They are conceive, craft, correct.  The author talks about shortening the writing so that more attention can be focused on the writing itself.  It is important for writers, especially early writers to spend plenty of time practicing writing while receiving direction and guidance from their teachers.  I know in my own experience dealing with children with learning disabilities, writing often suffers due to deficits in the area of reading.  Their is a natural progression to a childs developement.  First they learn to read and then writing begins to develope. 

Teaching Student Centered Mathematics Grades K-3

Chapter 9 deals with early fraction concepts.  Fractions present a considerable challenge for elementary and even middle school students.  This chapter explores a complete conceptual development for beginning at grade 1 or 2, with most of the concepts for 3rd grade.  These concepts range from the understanding of the fractional part of the whole, models for fractions, fraction symbols, fraction number sense, and equivalent-fraction concepts. 

Chapter 10 begins to touch on algebraic reasoning.  Today we hear and read about algebraic reasoning and thinking.  This includes students uses algebra patterns, representations, and functions.  These concepts should begin in Kindergarten and continue through the years.  This chapter focuses on the content of algebra: pattern and regularity, representation and symbolism, and relationships and functions.

Chapter 11 talks about helping children use data.  Data in the form of graphs is important in the way we receive information in everyday life.  Students must begin be grasping how information is categorized and presented in several graphical forms.  The focus of our teaching should be for our students to be able to use information from graphs to answer questions. 

Chapter 12 deals with early experiences and with probability concepts.  Simply telling children how probability works is completely useless.  Instruction at this level should confront students with the outcomes of simple games and experiments with discussion of the reasons for these outcomes. 

 

 

 

Teaching Student Centered Mathematics K-3

Chapter 5 dealt with base-ten concepts and place value.  A students concept of place value developes over the K-6 span, grades K-3 being the most important years in this time.  In years K and 1 they count and recognize patterns to 100.  They also begin to place items in groups of ten as a unit.  Second graders begin to connect these patterns to our base ten number system, and third graders carry this over to 3 and 4 digits.  Children also start working to put numbers together and take them apart in many different ways to solve different types of addition and subtraction problems.  Children should be allowed to use their experiences with computation to grow understanding of place value as well as firm up computation.  These concepts should be taught together not separately. 

Chapter 6 touches on strategies for whole- number computation.  One way of working a math problem should not be the goal for mastery of computational skills.  Mastery of computational skills is very important, however growth of many skills that will serve in the real world should be the goal. 

Chapter 7 geometric concepts and thinking is the focus here.  Not all people think about geometric ideas in the same manner.  It is beneficial to think of objectives in terms of two separate but related terms:  spatial reasoning, or spatial sense.  Spatial sense is an idea or intuition about shapes and their relationships.  Spatial reasoning deals with the way children think and reason about a shape in space.  This chapter talks about how to teach children in both areas at all different levels. 

Chapter 8 discusses measurement.  Before anything is measured meaningfully, it is important to understand the attribute to be measured.  Children must tie measurement and estimation to a personal understanding with the unit being used to measure. 

 

 

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