Mathematics Vocabulary Lesson

This week in Literacy we all created and taught vocabulary mini-lessons that fit into our unit. I taught a lesson on common vocabulary associated with word problems, which fits nicely into my unit because of our exploration of word problems in the applications of linear relationships. The final performance assessment for my unit is for students to create their own word problems, so not only does this lesson help teach students about the language to use when writing the word problems, but it will also help them to break down the meaning of word problems as we go through content and its applications throughout the unit. I will expand on this lesson to go over skills to decipher word problems, but a crucial piece of being able to understand word problems is definitely understanding the language used.
The lesson plan for my vocabulary mini lesson can be found here.
In creating this lesson it was tricky to choose which words to use because there are a vast amount of mathematical words used in math word problems, so I decided to focus this 20 minute mini lesson on an overview of many words. I defined a few of the words, but what I thought would be more powerful was having students use their knowledge of these words in other contexts to try and estimate which operation each word corresponded to. Another important part of this lesson is where I had students read a word problem and highlight math vocabulary within it and write down which operation the words corresponded to. This not only gets students in the habit of being able to identify these words within a word problem, but it also exposes them to some examples of word problems which will come to help when they write their own. Part of my lesson on using tools to decipher word problems will include highlighting mathematical vocab, underlining the question being asked, circle any numbers/data values with their units, and more, so this is a great practice at the first step and a good transition into the nest part of the lesson.
The performance criterion associated with creating this vocabulary lesson is 8.2: Candidates use a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways. This is shown through the variety of strategies I used in my lesson to get students thinking about the content. I had them reflect on how they've heard the vocabulary words outside the classroom, I had them do a hands-on activity of sorting words into categories of operations, and I had them write their own word problems using the language we discussed in class. This encouraged students to draw upon their experiences to think of where they have heard certain language, and this helped to make the learning more personal for each student.
Through this process I learned that vocabulary commonly used in mathematics has other uses most times. It is important to understand that students will think about how they know the words outside the classroom, so if you as a teacher can make a connection for them that links the definition they already know with the definition in math class, they'll be able to remember it better. In my lesson, a student asked a question about the term "left over" and which operation it corresponds to, so I gave him an example he would understand. If you make a large dinner, but only eat two thirds of the food, then whatever food you have not eaten you can enjoy as leftovers the next day. Mathematically, you can think of your leftovers as being made up of subtracting the amount of food you ate by the total food at the beginning. The operation happening here is subtraction, thus we can see that the term "left overs" corresponds to subtraction in word problems. This was one way to use an example of how students know a word in other contexts to relate it to how you want them to think of it mathematically.
This process also taught me more about myself as a teacher. I love incorporating activities in my lessons, however in a lesson this short I may have tried to do too many. I have difficulty timing out a 20 minute lesson without seeming rushed, while getting through enough content, finding a way to engage students, and assessing students comprehension. I can tell that I seem more rushed toward the end than I would hope to be, but as a have more opportunities to teach, I'll be able to practice timing more. I also noticed that in my teaching I have a strong focus on if the students understand a concept and I'm willing to explain something in multiple ways. At my placement this semester I learned the importance of specifying directions on an assignment or activity, as students often got confused. I try to really specify my directions to students as best I can, however in watching the video of this teaching experience, I see I may have tried to explain some things in more ways than necessary, which in turn could confuse students. I'm going to try a new method to go about this, where in planning my lesson I'll explicitly write down two clear ways of explaining directions for an assignment or activity, then when I explain it in class I can refer to those explanations if I feel I am not being clear or if students look confused.
Overall, this teaching experience was a great opportunity to learn about how to help students connect their prior knowledge with new knowledge when learning about these math vocabulary words.