Blog Post #1: Week 2 & 3 - Unpacking, Specializing and Generalizing

 Hey everyone! 😊

This week’s topic focused on the idea of Specializing and Generalizing, which go hand in hand when solving problems. Chapter 1 of the textbook was very engaging, as it defined the terms, it gave great examples that allowed me to reflect on my thinking and problem-solving strategies, as well as it listed some strategies that may be helpful to students when working on problems. 

This week I was the ‘Word Watcher’ in the Reading Roles discussion. I found this role extremely helpful, as I was able to have a deeper understanding of the terms, which therefore helped me understand how these approaches would be used. Some of the terms I pulled out of the chapter were:

• Specializing
• Generalizing
• Resolutions
• STUCK!
• AHA!
• Check
• Reflect
• Rubric

I definitely thought that this chapter gave some great ideas that we as teacher candidates can use in our future classrooms, such as STUCK, AHA, Check and Reflect!

During our online lecture this week, I could definitely see how all students learn differently. Joyce split us into 3 groups and asked us to figure out how many handshakes there would be if everyone in our class (10 people) shook hands with each other once. My group, Sydney, Shauna, and I all came up with the answer of 90 handshakes. Sydney used a visual to see the handshakes, Shauna used a written response, and I used a chart. 

In my chart I created a vertical axis with students #1-10, then a horizontal axis with students #1-10. I chose this way, as I could match up each student with all the other students. I thoughts that this chart would show all of the handshakes, which would be a good visual to show the class. Here is a picture of the chart I drew:

My response was the same answer as my group members, so we thought we all had it right until we took a closer look at my graph. We then began to question whether 90 was correct because as you can see on my chart, student #2 cannot shake hands with student #1, because student #1 already shook #2’s and in the first line of handshakes. We then realized we couldn’t double the handshakes, so we had so make sure all students only shook each other’s hand once. 

Here is what my second chart looked like, with our total number of handshakes being 45:

Once we regrouped with the entire class, I noticed a lot of the other students were using equations to solve the problem, which I began to reflect on the idea from the Week 2 reading from Ball & Bass. As teachers, we have to be able to unpack our knowledge. We have to be able to break down the answer we come up with, or else our students won’t fully understand. I decided to complete this activity with a more visual chart, as I wanted to be able to show my work to the class. Obviously, I am good at math and can figure this question out with an equation, but I think it is important for us as teachers to think outside our comfort zone and to unpack the question and unpack our response in a way that can reach all of our students. We must use explanations, we must use visuals, and I think it is important for us to take a step back and see how we think a student may attempt this type of problem.