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Textbooks: A scaffold for teachers. Marcelle Good International HS @ Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, NY July 20, 2011. A few facts about my 9th and 10th grade students:.
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Textbooks: A scaffold for teachers Marcelle Good International HS @ Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, NY July 20, 2011
A few facts about my 9th and 10th grade students: • 100% are English Language Learners (from beginning to intermediate proficiency); they represent 20 different countries of origin. • Their reading levels in English range from pre-K through 7th grade, as do their reading levels in their native language • They have had between 2 years and 9 years of formal schooling by the time I see them, and fewer than 4 years of schooling in the US. • Some students have procedural mastery of algebra through linear equations, some students struggle with operations on single-digit integers. • All of them learn algebra together in 1 room.
One way to take a (really amazing) textbook and create a scaffold* for your students A note on the scaffold: If a scaffold is unique to the task, it is not a scaffold, because students need to learn a new scaffold every time. Talk to me later if you think this is CRAZY TALK and you want clarification.
One page of the textbook with scaffolding (chunk the text, read aloud, give a prompt)
…gave rise to a scaffold for solving equations that I used ALL YEAR!!!
A few closing thoughts… Jesse Johnson shared the good news of the fabulous CME Project Algebra 1 textbook with me while she was at PCMI last year. Using this textbook changed my practice. PCMI-ers: Share with your colleagues. You never know what is going to have an impact on someone’s practice.
I found this out yesterday, and subsequently hijacked the 5-minute short (thanks, Carol!): BOWEN WAS ONE OF THE CO-AUTHORS OF THIS BOOK. When you read it, it feels like a mathematician wrote it. For more information go to: http://cmeproject.edc.org/ If you have questions for me: m.good@ihsph.org