Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Partnership for 21st Century Skills or P21 is a website that can be located at the following url, http://www.p21.org/ . This is a website devoted to bringing together the core standards and 21st Century skills for our students. This project is made up of members from the business community as well as educational leaders and policymakers. The site offers many resources and publications for implementing the development of 21st Century skills into the classroom.
I was a bit overwhelmed with the website initially. It took me a while to navigate through the site to find all that it had to offer. The site is very thought provoking. It requires you to think, as an educator, about what skills we really need to be teaching our students and what a student who is going to be productive in the 21st Century must be able to do.
My first thought when I heard 21st Century skills was technology skills. I was surprised when I seen the list of skills this project was referring to. There are many skills listed that students need to possess to be productive in the 21st Century. The skills are; critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, information and technology literate, flexible and adaptable, innovative and creative, globally competent, and environmentally literate.
These are not skills that are going to be taught by using a text book and worksheets. Students are going to have to have authentic assessments given and be allowed to learn through project based units to gain these skills. Students are going to have to become more active learners as well if they are going to gain these skills.

Using a blog in the classroom

I believe that a blog could be used in my sixth grade Math classroom to help the students interact with content and to also help students assist each other with problems they may be having with the content. I envision a blog where students can work together to solve a multi-step problem. Students can share their ideas on what steps to take and check each others work.

I also think a blog would be a good resource for students to use to get help with content they may be struggling with. They may also use it to be informed on class information they may have missed if absent from school that day.

By using a blog the students can learn to better work together and help teach each other.

Order of Operations

In sixth-grade math we do quite a bit of work with order of operations. My students come with a working knowledge of the rules for order of operations however, there are some common mistakes that they make. The students can recite the famous saying, "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally". They understand that the letters PEMDAS stand for parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction.

The problem with this saying is the students see the order in a linear manner and believe that multiplication is always performed before division and addition always before subtraction. To try and clear up this misconception I reteach my students the rules for order of operation using a stairs or steps method. I draw four stairs or steps and list the steps as follows.

I label the first step with a P and the second step with an E. The third step I label with a M and a D along with an arrow going left to right. The fourth and final step I label with an A and a S along with another arrow going left to right. This diagram helps students to remember that multiplication and division are the same step in the order of operations and should be completed left to right following the parentheses and exponents steps. It also shows the same concept for addition and subtraction being the same step.

This has had success in my classroom for my students to see the order of operations less linear and clear up some of the common mistakes being made.

If anybody has suggestions that have had success with teaching the order of operations please feel free to contribute.

Welcome!

Welcome to Middle School Math. I have taught middle school math for 11 years. This blog is intended to help share tips, techniques, and strategies for middle school math. Please feel free to contribute in any way.