Mathematics in Art

The universal design of learning was created to make learning as flexible and fitting for every individual student as possible. As educators, it's important that we give each student their own means of representation, expression, and engagement. Every student varies in the way that they learn, and even in their assessment skills. I hadn’t thought about how I would find different ways to teach my students until I realized how many things that don’t seem to have any similarities are intertwined. When I saw the painting in class that we had related to pyramids, it led me to think of other ways I could use art in my classroom.

While I was making my way through all the collections in the museum, I found a painting that stood out to me. Although the painting itself didn’t look intricate but just like a collage of rectangles, it gave me the idea of using it for teaching perimeters of rectangles in my classroom. Giving students a visual different from the norm would automatically grasp their attention at first. To keep them interested, I would then use some rectangles that have missing pieces to help them learn how they would then find what the missing piece equals. Just by bringing one painting into a classroom, we can teach concepts in ways that we might not have thought of.  Getting students to learn, and understand material in a variety of ways will only help students academically to be more accepting of other methods of learning, and by doing that we can only hope they will start to apply some of that to real world scenarios.

By: Pierre Daura Untitled Street PICIRII 3

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Resource Blog

This week I found a resource called howtosmile that will help teachers and students search for science and math activities that have been handpicked from other sources. The unique thing about this website is that it actually shows the time the activities will take to complete, as well as the cost of the activity which can be a great tool for new teachers to think about as they do their lesson planning. This resource will be especially beneficial for me because I think I’ll have a hard time coming up with science activities as well as activities that are just different from everyday classroom ones. It also allows you to search by grade level to help narrow your search for the appropriate grade level. The best part about this website is that its all available for free, and all of the activities have already been done. It’s such an easy access website, and can be great for really any educators that need ideas for their classrooms or parents that may be homeschooling. 

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Content Differentiation in Science

My decision about going into the education field has not altered at all since I was in middle school. Being more than halfway through this semester, I just realized how much I’ve learned about the teaching profession in such little time. As a teacher, there are so many things you need to know, and it feels so overwhelming to me as I hear about these new strategies or ideas to implement every time I read a new article. After getting through the video, I felt a little less overwhelmed just hearing her conclude that no matter how many years you’ve been teaching there will always be something you can improve. I didn’t realize how many things Mrs. Maronbot could’ve improved until after she actually improved them which just shows how important it is for teachers to bounce ideas off of each other when creating lesson plans. One thing that stood out to me in this video was when one of the suggestions was for her to ask more application questions. As a teacher, I think I’ll struggle with this more than other things. When I was watching her ask the questions during her first observation, I noticed that she was really trying to engage and ask her students enough questions to guide the lesson. I learned how essential it is for teachers to be challenging students to get their brains to work just a little harder than normal. This video helped me see a different side of teaching, and I continue to learn something new about this profession and how we can improve things everyday.

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