More than half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education.
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While studying for my Masters Degree in teaching, learning, and leadership, I have learned that students who struggle in math have a better experience when the teacher starts class by using activities that build spatial sense. These activities help students think differently about math and change negative attitudes into positive attitudes. I experimented with QuickDraw once a week and my students loved it.
I plan to create a new bell-work program where students will have a different type of activity each day to build a spatial sense and positive attitudes towards math. In this new bellwork program, students will engage in different activities including: use pattern blocks to create images based on outlines, use Unifix Cubes and connecting blocks to replicate images shown to them. After replicating the images, students will then draw different views, front view, side view, and top view. Students will use tangrams to place the shapes inside the outline of an image. Also, they will be solving different types of logic puzzles. These activities are both fun and engaging for students and gets them thinking about math in a different way. By spending 5-10 minutes on fun spatial sense activities, students should change their negative feelings toward math class into positive feelings toward math class. My hope is that students will look forward to my class rather than dread it.
About my class
While studying for my Masters Degree in teaching, learning, and leadership, I have learned that students who struggle in math have a better experience when the teacher starts class by using activities that build spatial sense. These activities help students think differently about math and change negative attitudes into positive attitudes. I experimented with QuickDraw once a week and my students loved it.
I plan to create a new bell-work program where students will have a different type of activity each day to build a spatial sense and positive attitudes towards math. In this new bellwork program, students will engage in different activities including: use pattern blocks to create images based on outlines, use Unifix Cubes and connecting blocks to replicate images shown to them. After replicating the images, students will then draw different views, front view, side view, and top view. Students will use tangrams to place the shapes inside the outline of an image. Also, they will be solving different types of logic puzzles. These activities are both fun and engaging for students and gets them thinking about math in a different way. By spending 5-10 minutes on fun spatial sense activities, students should change their negative feelings toward math class into positive feelings toward math class. My hope is that students will look forward to my class rather than dread it.