Learning to Learn
Jeffrey Watson - Secondary mathematics blog
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3y ago
One of my senior students, Vaishnavi Katta, asked if she could write a guest post on my educational blog.  I very enthusiastically said 'absolutely!'  She talks here about classroom environment, and its effect on learning.  Enjoy!  Jeff Watson Hello, my name is Vaishnavi and I recently finished with my senior year. Having recently wrapped up 13 years of education at home has got me thinking about the importance of a classroom’s environment in learning. Now more than ever, I realize the value of interaction between students in an educational setting. An interaction I believe ..read more
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Learning to Learn
Jeffrey Watson - Secondary mathematics blog
by
4y ago
One of my senior students, Vaishnavi Katta, asked if she could write a guest post on my educational blog.  I very enthusiastically said 'absolutely!'  She talks here about classroom environment, and its effect on learning.  Enjoy!  Jeff Watson Hello, my name is Vaishnavi and I recently finished with my senior year. Having recently wrapped up 13 years of education at home has got me thinking about the importance of a classroom’s environment in learning. Now more than ever, I realize the value of interaction between students in an educational setting. An interaction I believe ..read more
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Changing a teacher-centered lesson into a student-centered lesson using the Cultures of Thinking framework
Jeffrey Watson - Secondary mathematics blog
by
4y ago
Figure 1: One version of the compass points routine My colleague, Roger Winn, and I presented at the IB Global Conference held in New Orleans from July 24th - 28th, 2019.  Our session had two goals: 1) to have attendees revise a current lesson that is more teacher-centered into one that is student-centered using the Cultures of Thinking framework, and 2) to have the attendees experience what it is like to be in a student-centered classroom by running our session as we run our classrooms in Michigan. ​We started out the session by utilizing the Compass points thinking routin ..read more
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What is Cultures of thinking, and will it work in a Math classroom?
Jeffrey Watson - Secondary mathematics blog
by
4y ago
Cultures of Thinking is an educational framework developed by the Project Zero team at Harvard University.  The framework brings to light the eight cultural forces that are at play in our classrooms: Expectations, Language, Time, Opportunities, Routines, Environment, Interactions, and Modeling.  These forces are at play in every classroom; CoT provides tools for the teacher to properly harness these forces to produce 21st century, globally minded learners and thinkers.   Teachers can use a variety of methods to create a Culture of Thinking in their classrooms, such as allowing critical time w ..read more
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Fostering quality interactions in the classroom.
Jeffrey Watson - Secondary mathematics blog
by
4y ago
Recently, my colleague, Roger Winn, and I published our second article in the educational journal, "Creative Teaching & Learning" based in the UK.  I have attached the article below.  Please read and provide feedback ..read more
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Quadratics Day 1: Planning an entire unit with Cultures of Thinking in mind
Jeffrey Watson - Secondary mathematics blog
by
4y ago
  This blog is re-posted from November, 2017. I have been teaching for quite a while and have taught units on quadratics more times than I can count.  The concepts of vertex, line of symmetry, factoring, quadratic formula, and intercepts were frequently discussed, often times in more than one class.  More often than not, when I was a 'section' teacher, I followed the current textbook's recipe on how to do this.  The current textbook I am working with lays it out like this: Section 1: Graphing quadratic functions Section 2: Translating parabolas Section 3: Solving equations using square roots ..read more
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Opportunities gained...or lost
Jeffrey Watson - Secondary mathematics blog
by
4y ago
I recently wrote an article with my colleague, Roger Winn, chemistry teacher at International Academy East.  The article appears in the journal "Creative Teaching and Learning", published in the UK.  Enjoy ..read more
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Opportunities gained......or lost
Jeffrey Watson - Secondary mathematics blog
by
4y ago
Figure 1 Recently we started a lesson on similar triangles.  I thought a lot about what to have the kids do, and a small part of me (very small) wanted to 'direct teach' the lesson to save time - we are behind, after all, and if I just told them what similar triangles were and what to do with them we could move on to the next lesson.  In the past, I would typically give them scripted notes that had a set of similar triangles, such as the example in figure 1.  I would explain what similar triangles were, and how to find different things about them, such as angle measures  and/or side lengths ..read more
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Graphing inequalities
Jeffrey Watson - Secondary mathematics blog
by
4y ago
One of the concepts we have been studying in my freshmen math class is solving systems of inequalities, such as the system seen below. In the past, the lesson would go something like this: 1) I would model how to draw each curve in the system. 2) I would draw dashed or solid lines and explain why they were dashed or solid. 3) I would shade the appropriate region and explain how to determine this. 4) I would ask if there were any questions and would address them with each student directly. 5) I would give the students a different, but very similar example to do and monitor their progress. At ..read more
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A student's perspective on Cultures of Thinking
Jeffrey Watson - Secondary mathematics blog
by
4y ago
This video features a presentation by student Christina Thymalil who originally researched this topic for a Theory of Knowledge (IB curriculum) class.  In her presentation she focuses on how core classes such as math and science tend to enable teaching practices such as spoon feeding and idle note taking. But, new ideas based on the book "Cultures of Thinking" by Ron Ritchhart, depict several methods on how incorporating different cultures in the classroom can enable any class to become a medium of creativity and independent thinking ..read more
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