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Thursday, February 19, 2015

Use Your Classroom as a Teaching Tool

Dwayne Daniel from Safer Foundation shares the following: I have used a variety of ideas and strategies to ensure that my students were getting math such as using the entire classroom itself including the floor, walls and ceiling to provide an understanding of measurements. Some of my students had difficulties with fractions, decimals and proportions. The floor tiles of our classrooms are usually a certain size such as 12 inches by 12 inches or 16" x 16" and their familiarity with this can translate to our math lesson. Painting a wall for some students helps them understand how much paint is needed to cover the walls of a rectangular room. For example, a room that has 9 feet ceiling height by 15 feet width needs a certain amount of gallons and the gallon can of paint tells us how much area this one gallon will cover. This uses your fractions, basic arithmetic and geometry as well as measurements. Be sure to give them a measuring tape for this hands-on assignment because they’ll enjoy learning this way. 

In addition, the walls can be used to covers fractions and proportions for your visual and interactive students. Don’t’ focus on what we do not have in the classroom, but what we CAN USE to deliver the quality services our students deserve and need to BEST LEARN. So, look around the room and use it as a tool for your assignments. 
   
Thanks Dwayne for sharing some tools from your educator tool belt! Dwayne is a current participant in the Special Learning Needs Resource Specialists Institute in the northern portion of Illinois.

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