R. Watson Journal 1

3. Refine – How will I use the information in my classroom?

            I paid more attention to the chapter on vocabulary development since that is an area where I can improve greatly.   I want to do a better job helping ELLs understand the academic vocabulary that is related to Algebra and Geometry.  Once students reach high school, the math concepts are more abstract, including words like algebraic expression, imaginary number and skew lines just to name a few.  These ideas are challenging enough for any student and even more difficult for the student who is seeing these words for the first time in a language other than their native tongue.

 

            The information on word walls included some ideas that I already use such as having students illustrate vocabulary words using pictures.  The idea of creating a multilingual wall dictionary is one that I haven’t tried yet but I would like to try it for the next unit on the Pythagorean Theorem.  I can envision key words such as hypotenuse, leg and right angle posted on the wall in not only English, but in Spanish, Mandarin, French, Vietnamese, Hindi, etc.

Reading both about technology and vocabulary development reminded me of the value animations can add to understanding vocabulary.  Abstract ideas such as an angle, are sometimes better understood through movement.  When students can see the actual rotation of an acute angle through a computer animation, the visual image helps fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle they had formed based on words alone.  I recently tried this strategy to help students understand the idea of rotation. Students used laptops and dynamic software to rotate a geometric shape around a reference point.  They could move the shape all the way around the reference point completing a full 360 degree rotation or they could stop the figure at any moment and observe a particular angle of rotation.

 

Another helpful suggestion in the RWL book was to use TPR (total physical response).   Using body and gestures to illustrate words is something that I do to some extent.  For example, when talking about positive slope and negative slope there is a yoga-like pose that I use to illustrate a line moving downward (from left to right) and a similar pose for a line moving upward.  The “TPR in a Circle” strategy; however, is something that I have never tried that I think would be very effective.  This strategy starts with the students arranged in a circle and the teacher performs an action such as walking.  She then asks the students what she is doing.  When a student answers correctly then that student gets to perform a different action.  This action continues until several of the students get a chance to perform.  This strategy seems suitable for any grade level including high school.  I see it working well with geometry terms such as acute angle, right angle, obtuse angle, parallel lines, perpendicular lines, triangle, quadrilateral, hexagon, perimeter and area.