At this point most of our students have access to some sort of mobile phone. Are you using these in your instruction? I have met teachers who send text messages to their students and have found tools that allow teachers to contact many students at once, but the idea of individualized instruction via cell phone has always seemed like it could be very time consuming. And that’s where Cell-Ed comes in. Continue reading Hold the Phone! ESOL Instruction via Mobile Phone
When I was a student, in every mathematics class I had, the teacher presented problems and explained how to solve them. The teacher would do a sample problem with us, then give us a worksheet full of similar problems to try on our own. Our success depended on how well we remembered the procedure we had been shown. It never occurred to me that there was any other way to learn math. Continue reading A Window into International Education
Years ago, when beginning some work on percentage with some HSE students (they were called GED students at the time), I posed the following problem:
Veronica’s math class has 25 students. If 7 of them identify as men, what percent of the class does not identify as men?
I used it as a quick assessment to see what kind of understanding I could build off and what kind of misconceptions I could draw out. Continue reading Mistakes in Math: Expected, Respected and Inspected
As adult education instructors, we know that our students bring all kinds of preconceived ideas about math into the classroom. Many see math as boring—a subject governed by processes, rules, and formulas that has little connection to their world. Furthermore, because they may have struggled with math in the past, they think that they will never be good at math. “I’m just not a math person.” We’ve all heard that from our students. Continue reading Problem-Solving Activities, Videos, and Articles Promoting Growth Mindset
How often do you use video with your students? How often do you think your students access video? Perhaps you are using the Flipped Classroom model ( typical homework and in class work are flipped–students may read or watch a video outside of class and then time in class is used for discussion, exercises, and projects).