Week Six 1510

This weekend turned out to be a very hot and humid weekend.  We started Friday off with thunderstorms and ended the day with almost 7" of rain in a flash storm that lasted about 2 hours!  That is a lot of rain in a short amount of time.  Interstate 90 runs through Austin, MN and actually is perpendicular to the end of our block that we live on, and the city closed Interstate 90 for a few hours due to flooding!  We have lived here for 15 years and although the interstate gets closed several times during the winter season, this was a first for us.  Austin, MN made the Twin Cities news because of the closure, that is always fun!  When we started our day on Saturday, we could tell right away that the heat was going to overtake the cool aftermath of a thunderstorm.  My kids got the idea to set up an ice tea stand at the end of our block and they asked me to bake chocolate chip cookies to sweeten the deal :)

Ironically, this particular week in Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers, fractions was the topic of learning.  Baking is filled with fractions and is always a great teaching tool for my kids when we get the chance to do it.  By the time I began baking, the temperature outside had reached the low 90s and even though the air conditioning inside was perfect, turning on the oven was pure madness!  However, when it comes to creative ideas and the kids getting along, I will help them out with just about anything.  They braved the heat and set up their stand and sold $23.00 worth of ice tea and chocolate chip cookies at $0.50 for both.  They had a blast and Chris and I enjoyed peeking out the window of the air conditioned house to watch them flag down customers and see the smiles on their faces when they would make another sale.

Here is the recipe for these delicious chocolate chip cookies:
Oven at 350 degrees

1/2 cup softened butter (not margarine)
1/2 cup shortening
Beat these two together in a large mixing bowl, set aside
2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Combine into separate bowl and mix generously
1+ packages of semi-sweet chocolate chips for baking

Take approximately 1/3 of the flour mixture and add it to the butter/shortening and mix.  I use and electric mixer.  Once blended, add another 1/3 and mix, and then add the remaining flour mixture and combine until all blended.

I listed 1+ packages of chocolate chips to the ingredients because we love chocolately cookies.  I have made this recipe for years and I have never had a complaint about them and pretty much everyone we know loves them.  So here is my secret:  I add one full package and about 1/4 of another package and hand mix them into the cookie batter.

Drop tablespoon size balls onto cookie sheet, I can get 8 on a jelly roll size pan.  Bake 10-12 minutes but keep an eye on them.  My first batch always takes longer.  And here is part two of my secret:  Take the cookies out just as they are slightly brown around the edges.   This particular recipe does well with a slightly underbaked cookie.  Even though the cookies rarely make it two or three days after I am done baking, on the off chance there are a few left, they are still soft.  If you leave the cookies in the oven until they are browned, they will not be as delicious as they really can be! :)

So this is what our weekend was all about, ice tea, chocolate chip cookies, and extremely hot temperatures!  I love that I was able to take time away from school to be a part of this fun activity with my kids.  My daughter would run home every so often to cool off and on one such visit, she exclaimed that a woman had just given her and her brother $1.00 each without wanting any tea or cookies solely because this woman had done lemonade stands as a kid and it made her happy to see them out having fun!  Now that is pretty nice!

Math really is a great subject and, as you can see, is a part of daily life.  Baking is a great activity for kids to learn about fractions and reduce recipes or doubling them.  In the classroom, it is great to have manipulatives for students to continue to have the hands on learning that is such a vital part of the school day.  I look forward to more baking and teaching as summer will pass and the frenzy of the holidays approach.

Week Six 1512

When my husband and I decided to start a family, one very big decision to make was in regards to childcare.  Do we do daycare or does one of us stay home?  Hands down we chose being at home and I was beyond thrilled to be a stay-at-home mom.  It was hard work but very rewarding.  I took part-time jobs here and there to help out with bills and to have some extra money.  I ended up getting a job as a server at Applebees about 8 years ago.  I worked nights while my husband worked days teaching 2nd grade.  It worked perfectly for our family and we all got used to the schedule.  A few years ago, I started to feel that a change was needed.  Our kids were getting to the age of being more independent and we were finding our summers being gulped up by camping and family activities.  Being a server has its perks, but weekends and holidays off is not one of them.  I had graduated in 1996 with a BS in Corporate Wellness and was not seeing that as the career to re-enter with.  With much discussion, we decided that going back to school to get my teaching license was the best fit for our family, and I was very excited about this! :)

The first step in starting a Teacher Licensure Program is to take the MTLE, Minnesota Teacher License Examination, in the areas of reading, writing, and math.  Now, I hadn't cracked a textbook in over 15 years and this turned out to be quite a test!  Thankfully, I have a husband who teaches and a few friends who are excellent in math, an area I have struggled with.  I studied for a month or so and went and took the test.  It turns out that I didn't pass the math portion.  Ugh.  That was a little hard to swallow but I kept a positive attitude and was happy that I was close to passing after being away from school for as long as I had been.  I have rescheduled the math portion of the MTLE for August 19th and after taking Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers this summer, I am confident that I will pass the exam!

The final chapter in our text is all about Algebraic Equations and Coordinate Geometry, all of which is a huge portion of the MTLE.  I found this particular chapter the most exciting chapter out of the text mainly because I know this is helping me tremendously for the upcoming exam.  As I read through the text, I was thankful that many of the equations and problem solving techniques were familiar to me and that I was actually able to understand them.  The terms slope, linear function, quadratic equation, factorization, midpoint, distance between points on a graph, and circle equation theorem sprinkled the entire chapter.  Any fear I may have had for math has been squished!  This course has helped me see that math is filled with equations and formulas, all of which are very logical and basically easy to input and solve once the time is taken to understand all that is taking place.  I am excited to get back into the classroom for observation with my mentor and help students with math with a confidence unparalleled to 3 months ago.  The culmination of this class has further confirmed that choosing a teaching path has been the right decision for me and my family.

Week Five 1512

I am an avid couponer :)  I love finding great deals and then add a coupon or two to it and make the deal even better.  I have to admit that with the amount of time I am spending on school this summer, my couponing has taken back seat to homework.  But, that doesn't mean that I have lost my touch at finding sweet deals.  Recently our grocery store, HyVee, had the sale of the century on Hormel Cheese Wranglers.  Now, if you have never had a Cheese Wrangler before, I highly recommend purchasing a package and trying one for yourself.  I am not sure what Hormel has done to create such a delicious hot dog, but they have outdone themselves with the Cheese Wrangler.

A package of Hormel Cheese Wranglers normally sell for $4.49 per package.  At the same time, I have never seen a coupon from the Hormel company offering even $0.25 off this delicatessen.  Now, if you enjoy hot dogs in general, you know that this is an outrageous price for an American treat.  But, it is a favorite at out house and so I purchase them for special occasions.  This particular 4-day sale offered Hormel Cheese Wranglers for $2.25/package!  This is a great sale!  It is almost a BOGO, buy one get one free, sale.  When I saw the sale ad, I almost did cartwheels!  I am glad that I didn't do any acrobats, I may have been laid up for weeks :)  My husband and I began to clean out our freezer in anticipation of some new product filling it up.  We decided that we could fit 48 packages of hot dogs in our freezer and be set with Cheese Wranglers for at least a year, probably 2 years.  We would have to eat a package of hot dogs per week to eat them all by next summer and that won't be happening.  I like them, but not that much.  This type of purchase is more of a "stock up" sale rather than a weekly dinner item.

I called ahead to the meat department to make sure we could purchase what turned out to be 4 cases of Cheese Wranglers, there are 12 packages in each case.  That is 48 packages of hot dogs, and each package has 8 hot dogs.  All in all we purchased 384 hot dogs and paid $108.00, instead of $215.52, which is a savings of $107.52, close to 50%!  That is alot of money!  It also turns out that each hot dog ends up costing us $0.28 per hot dog which is a cheap lunch in the summer when kids and friends come over!  I was very pleased with my purchase and these Cheese Wranglers will take us into next summer and beyond.  My advice to anyone wanting to save some money.....never pass up a good deal especially Hormel Cheese Wranglers!

Week Five 1510

Oh how I love Minnesota Summers!  Blue sky, green grass, birds chirping, and people out and about.  As a family, we enjoy camping, swimming, biking, and traveling during the summer months.  I have recently taken up walking as my form of exercise and stress relief.  I was an avid runner for almost 25 years, and about 2 years ago I started to feel my knees "give out" after a run.  So, in an effort to remain sane and healthy I began to walk; I feel great and there is no more pain in my knees.  And, walking is something that my husband and I can do together and actually hold a conversation!  He is 6'5" and I am 5'4" so any running we may have done in the past was a sprint for me and a jog for him.  So now, we walk together and soak in the great outdoors.

A few mornings ago, as we were beginning our walk, we noticed another couple beginning their walk about 6 blocks ahead of us.  (It is important to note that the path we walk is a basic rectangle.  I am a creature of habit and I have been running/walking this particular path for years.)  As we progressed down the first lag of the route, I started to hope that this couple would turn a different direction than the way we were going to be turning; at this point we had closed the gap to about 3 blocks.  (Please keep in mind that they have no idea we are behind them.)  They ended up turning the same direction that we would soon be going as well.  It was obvious that we were going to catch up to them!  My mind started to race as to how to pass two people that were walking when we too were walking!  It is one thing to pass a walker if you are biking or running, but walking?  How is this done?  When you pass do you yell "Coming up on your right!"  Or does one pick up the pace to the point of hyper extending your knees?  Call me crazy, but these are the things that swim through my mind when confronted with a pressure situation, such as the one we were about to encounter.

Pretty soon, I could hardly take the anxiety, we were right on top of them!  It was at that same moment that I remembered certain math formulas and how to pass these people without them knowing!  Just yards ahead of us was the high school athletic field; tennis courts, a soccer and football field, and a running track, and at the corner of that field, straight ahead, was the 2nd turn in the path.  As all of us approached the last intersection before the 2nd turn, we needed to make our move!  This was our opportunity to beat this couple by letting them go straight while we took an immediate right turn.  Now, I know that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, we however, had no straight line to walk.  Remember, there was an athletic field blocking the logical path to the opposite corner!  There was no way to cut through, this required speed and concentration!  The only way we were going to beat this other couple distance wise and end up ahead of them on the other side, was to pick up our speed; I mean drastically pick up our speed!

My husband thought  I had lost my mind, I was laughing and sweating profusely trying to beat this unsuspecting couple to the opposite side of this giant athletic field!  My husband kept saying, "You know, they have no idea that we were even behind them."  And I would reply, "Faster man!  We must beat them!"  (In hindsight, maybe the sun was starting to "get to me!")  Well, I am happy to report that our tenacity got us ahead of the other couple.  In fact, when we reached the opposite corner, they were almost a block behind us now!  This made me very happy and I laughed at how ridiculous and goofy I can be at certain times in my life.  But hey, I enjoy a challenge!

The path we walked is 2.7 miles in distance and we had completed it in 40 minutes.  This means that we walked at a pace of approximately 4 mph.  The pace we were walking at was 15 minutes/mile.  I used to run a 10 minutes mile, so this isn't too bad!  Remember, always keep your eyes open for living, breathing math situations and see how determination and a little fun can make a rather routine habit exhilarating!

Week Four 1512

I am going to start with a memory that I have of Geometry as a freshman in High School.  I was not very good at sitting and watching my teacher explain angles and lines and degrees on the chalkboard (Yes chalkboard.  I used to clap erasers as a chore after school!).  I distinctly remember taking a test that had 25 questions on it.  I did all the homework, I studied from the text, and then took the test.  I ended up getting 13/25 on the test.  I was devastated!  After class, I approached my teacher, practically in tears, and asked "what now?"  He looked at me and said "I have no idea, but you would have done better had you just guessed the answers rather than tried to figure them out."  Ugh!  That was not the response I was looking for.  I walked away from class that day telling myself that I have no ability in math and my teacher doesn't have much faith in me either.

As I reflect on that day, I know that my teacher didn't mean to crush my hopes of becoming an excellent math student.  Math tends to be difficult and requires extra effort for a person, like me, who doesn't see the equation or the answer or the reason for the answer.  I have no ill-feelings toward my teacher and I do remember that he had me come in after school for about a week as he helped me, but I was already mentally checked out.  Note to self:  as a teacher, never use sarcasm.

All of that to say that I was interested to read about the NCTM Geometry Standards for grades 3-5.  (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics).  As I scrolled through the information, I noticed how much the concept of visualization and relationships between shapes is stressed in the Standards.  "The study of geometry in grades 3-5 requires thinking and doing.  As students sort, build, draw, model, trace, measure, and construct, their capacity to visualize geometric relationships will develop."  (NCTM)  As I think about teaching, I am thankful that the standards are explicit in their objectives.  I see the standards that are written for all the subjects as a great tool and assurance that students are getting the best possible education they can get.  I look forward to challenging my students in their educational goals and will guard my tongue against the kind of "knee-jerk" remark that was said to me.

Week Four 1510

This week in Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers, I was able to read a vignette titled "Number Sense in the Classroom" (pages 18-22).  This was written by a college student studying to be a teacher, like me :)  The vignette opens with a conversation between Ms. Davis, the 4th/5th grade math teacher, and Rhonda Cane, the student intern.  They were speaking about an upcoming lesson in division and this particular response by Ms. Davis caught my attention:  "I want the children to be able to develop and modify an algorithm and to root the work in reality."  "Root the work in reality."  I really like this statement.  Teaching math is exciting and when students get the chance to apply what they are learning immediately, their potential for learning is dramatically increased.

The mathematical equation that was written on the board the next day in class was 126/9=?  The classroom was divided into two groups to test their theories.  Did someone say cooperative learning again?  This is incredible that students are given the opportunity to talk with each other and figure out real life situations in which this problem can be solved!  The students talked about candy and baseball cards and how to divide these items up equally.  Manipulatives were used to physically represent the candy or baseball cards and then begins the process of division, well sharing, in their case.  During this time that the students are teaching each other, Ms. Davis and Rhonda take time to walk around the room "eavesdropping and asking questions."

Eventually, the students become the algorithm to solve this problem.  After spending time letting the students share how they discovered the answer and comment on each other's work, Rhonda stated "it is interesting how the children forgot to use the manipulatives after a while."  I find it fascinating that the students forgot to use the manipulatives as they began to think through a real-life situation.  This shows me that the more I can give my students the chance to apply their learning, the more likely it is that my students will gain a deeper understanding of the concept being taught.  I was given the opportunity to observe excellent teachers this past semester, and I know that the time I spent in the classroom solidified all that I was learning as a student.  Applying what is learned to something you already enjoy, the candy or baseball cards or teaching, for me, is really the way to "root the work in reality" like Ms. Davis so eloquently stated.

In closing, I found this video on YouTube and found it appropriate for this scenario.  This video is showing a constructivist approach to a math class.  "Constructivist perspectives focus heavily on the role of students as active learners and also see learning as a social and collaborative process" (Pickle, 2010).   Cooperative learning is one of many techniques that are at the heart of constructivist teaching.

Week Three 1510

My assignment this week was all about cooperative learning.  Here is a You tube video that sums up the idea of cooperative learning:

Cooperative learning is an excellent tool for students, of all ages!  This past semester I was able to observe excellent teachers in the classroom.  I was surprised to see the constant movement in the classroom compared to what I grew up with almost 30 years ago.  Classrooms are mobile and active, which is something that is exciting to see.  I was able to watch these master teachers take students of all ability levels and create an environment that allows every student to excel.  In the elementary school that I have been observing in, there is a high population of ELL students.  I noticed that many of the ELL students that spoke no English would sit quietly in class, taking in all the sights and sounds of the classroom and then work the best they could on the assignments.  When the teacher or specialists spent extra time with the ELLs there was a greater opportunity for deeper learning.  However, with 25+ students in a class, it is easy for the quiet students and ELLs to get overlooked.  This is where cooperative learning is a great benefit for all students.

My mentor had great success with Think-Pair-Share in his classroom.  He used this technique daily and several times within each lesson.  I watched as quiet students came to life when they were given the time to think about an idea, share with their fellow classmates in a small group setting, and then present to the class as a whole.  I marveled as students encouraged each other and politely challenged some thoughts and ideas.  The students who were higher achieving always took the time to listen and offer any suggestions and the students who tend to struggle always listened closely.   There were times that I could literally see new ideas form as two or three students talked about concepts and ideas. 

This type of learning gets me very excited!  I look forward to observing over the next several years as I finish up my own education, and take all these ideas and concepts into my own classroom.  I can already see that cooperative learning is an incredible tool for every classroom.  I get excited watching students work together and understand ideas rather than "just learn it."  As students go into to the world and continue in their education and become employed, this teaching tool will prove beneficial in daily living.  You can't get much better than that!