Additional Assignment #5

The Medium Shapes The Learning
This post was about using other means and tools such as technology in our lesson plan and in our work in the classroom. He suggests that it isnt the tool that we use, it is simply the fact that whichever you do use will end up reshaping learning in ways that we sometimes fail to recognize.

He Just Likes The Class For The Pencils
In this post he discusses how he runs his classroom, freely when you obey the rules but stict if necessary. He also presented a situation where a student didnt know why he love the teachers class, but he did. Most of the other teachers thought he only loved his class because of the resources he had in his class such as computers, but in reality it wasnt just the computers. The student loved the class because the teacher actually understood, respected, listened, gained a relationship with them, and was their friend. I believe this is how every teacher and classroom should be ran and i hope mine is as well.

Sketchy Portraits
In this post he uses a pencil as a metaphor for middle school students lives. He says instead of being a black and white world(ink) they now see gray(pencil) meaning that they see uncertainty. He explains that its just their age the way they act and that at this age they want to be treated like adults and like children, hence the gray. The teacher he talks about sees that it can only be one way or the other and he says that she is writing the world in ink and that there is no room for gray areas or uncertainty in the world. He is sketching it out in pencil and that he is able to see both sides of the situation, which i believe will help in the long run.

Just Teach Them To Solve For X
In this post he makes an interesting conection with the use of metephors and the meaning of the variable "X". He has the students use metaphor to understand the value of "X" not just simply learn how to solve for it. I believe this will help his students become a step ahead because he is teaching them to understand the work and data not just plug and chug memorizations. The value "X" is abstract in math and he says that metaphors are humans ways of making sense out of the abstract, and this is why he has his students do what they do with metaphors in math class, all to help them understand.