Derek Sears

Dr. Wargo
EDU 415
12/1/23
Strategy Collection
1) My first strategy I would use is a discussion strategy. It also could count as an
“Activating Prior Knowledge” strategy. I would chose to use the Mentimeter word cloud
for this discussion strategy. This will allow my students to put ideas onto the board
anonymously that will spark a discussion about volume and baking. The book I will use
is, The Great British Baking Show: A Bake for All Seasons. This will be a trade-book I
use to help us learn about volume and how it relates to the real world. I will connect these
by doing the word cloud first, and then building off of that with a discussion afterwords.
This will allow us to see what my students know, and then also lead us into a good
discussion about what we want to continue to know.
I think this will be a useful and beneficial strategy because it relates volume to the real
world. It also will allow my students to share ideas without being worried the will be
criticized for being wrong. I think this strategy combined with this book would also be
nice because it gives a chance for some of my students who enjoy baking to have a
chance and show/share what they know and enjoy.
Once we are done with the discussion strategy we will use the book to see examples of
baking, and how volume relates to that. This will be a helpful way to see our ideas put
into practice.

https://www.mentimeter.com/app/presentation/alywk4dkcqkye43b7ockemapi2hgah19/
f8de3i8aygzb/edit

I did not make an answer key for this because it would depend on what the students put
on the board, and there is also no specific right or wrong answer.

2) The second strategy I would use is a vocabulary strategy. The strategy I would use
involves me writing words that relate to my topic, in this case, statistics, onto Lego
bricks. I would then want my students to connect Lego bricks that have words that mean
the same thing, or are directly connected. This strategy would both accomplish the goal
of making sure my students knew what each specific word meant, but also making sure
that they knew how the words would connect with each other. I would do this before we
then examined the book, Football stats and the stories behind them: What Every Fan
 Needs to Know. This would let us learn our vocabulary first, and then explore what we
can learn from this book, and how we can explore stats from this book, while also
knowing our vocabulary before we do this.

I would choose this strategy because it allows our students to have some fun and also
make connections with vocabulary words. It would allow students to be creative and play
with Legos while also getting the practice of learning and connecting vocabulary. I think
this would be most useful as a way to activate prior knowledge, but also review the
vocabulary. It accomplishes a couple different goals in one. I also chose this book
because in the previous example I chose a baking book, this time I want to target an
audience that might enjoy sports a bit more.

Vocabulary Words I would use in this project in their groups. (For the project I would mix
all these words up):
Group 1: accuracy. Precision. Standard Deviation.
Group 2: Mean. Median. Mode. Average.
Group 3: Confidence Interval. Confidence Level. Confidence.
Group 4: Catches. Yards. Yards after Catch. Drops. (This would be vocab that was
important to learn for our book about football.)

There would be more words, and more categories. I would allow students to put these
bricks together and come up with why they thought each word went with the others. I
would very specifically make sure that this wasn’t an assignment that had a right or
wrong answer, but rather would want students to explain why they placed these words
together.
3) The third strategy I would use is the Hero vs. Villains chart. I would use this while
teaching a lesson about equations, numbers, and also just as a fun project to think about
math and how it relates. I chose to say this because the resource I would use is the Calvin
and Hobbes comic;
 In this comic I would first have students identify what Hero’s or Heroic ideas might be
found in the comic. By Hero, or Heroic ideas, I mean I want them to find what Calvin or
Hobbes did correctly in this comic. I would want them to identify what was done
correctly, what ideas were well thought out, and what seems like the right process.
Then I would want them to identify the villains. These would be the wrong ideas, or poor
math, or poor thought ideas. They would be able to identify what processes are wrong,
and why they are wrong.
I also like this idea because it allows my students to think about why these ideas are
wrong. This would help my students in their understanding, and eventual mastery of
math. Finally, this is a good project because it would show them how easy it can be to
find the mistakes in math. Hopefully this would encourage them to stop and think rather
than just give up when they are struggling. They would be able to recognize that there are
plenty of funny mistakes in this comic, and that sometimes the mistakes are more obvious
than people realize. Hopefully they would relate this to their own math, and then be more
willing to stop and rethink the process before they just give up.
I might use this as an actual lesson, but I might also just use it as one of the first mini-
lessons we do to start the year. This could be a fun way to A) see what my students know
about math. B) have a fun start to the year. C) encourage them early on that we can
accomplish difficulties in math, and overcome them, and that if Calvin and Hobbes can
figure out math, then we definitely can do it.

Link to answer Key: Hero vs. Villian chart.pdf

4) The fourth strategy I would use is a problem and solution outline. I would use this as a
studying text strategy. The text I would use for this strategy is, The Ultimate Guide To
Swimming Pool Construction And Maintenance For Beginners: Everything You Need to
Know about Owning and Caring for Your Swimming Pool including plumbing, Electrical
and Finishing (5th ed.). I would make the problem and solution outline for my students to
analyze the text.
 First I would expect my students to determine the problem that was in the text. I would
guide them the first time we did this so that the problem that they found was a good math
problem that was related to what we were studying. But after that I would allow them to
scan the book, and find a “problem” that we could analyze and find the solution too. I
would then have them use the problem and solution outline to begin to try and figure out
how they would solve the problem.

I really like using this outline for this book because of how many different things it helps
us figure out. First, it makes my students think and discover what the problem is, and
how to find it. Second, I like this because it directly relates the real world to our math. It
allows us to find real life problems in real life examples. It then would help my students
figure out how to relate our process to finding the solution to the real world.

Here is the outline: problem and solution graphic organizer.pdf

Here is the answer key: problem and solution graphic organizer answer key.pdf

5) The 5th Strategy I would use is the ReQuest Strategy. This strategy is built upon
questions, and asking multiple different questions and also the answering of different
questions. I would have my students read the passage, or the word problem that we would
be attempting. Then after we are finished, they would have a couple min. to ask me any
questions about the text that they had. Then I would have a couple min. to ask them any
questions about the text that I wanted to ask. Then I would have them attempt the
problem, or part of the problem. Then we would repeat those steps as necessary. (This is
slightly adapted for a math class and not a reading class).
A text I would have them use this for is, The Irrationals: A Story of the Numbers You
Can’t Count On. Because this is a book, this would be a class where we are just
introducing irrational numbers. I would assign parts of the book that we would read and
use this strategy on. The students and myself would read the sections, and then stop. Then
we would go through the questioning process. After the questions I would have them
make a prediction or two about what they thought might come next. Then we would go
back to reading and repeat the process. This is how this strategy would relate to this book.
It would be a great way of introducing us to this text, and also to what irrational numbers
are.

There isn’t really an answer key, or a worksheet I would hand out for this one. So, I will
list off some potential questions I would ask.

Q: What is an irrational number?

A: A number that can’t be expressed as integers.
Q: Why would we use irrational numbers?
A: they are necessary to solve certain problems.
Q: What is the most common “form” of irrational numbers?
A: A number that is most simplified and still under a sq. root symbol.
 Strategy Collection Bibliography
1) Bakers, G. B. B. S., & Hollywood, P. (2021). The Great British Baking Show: A Bake for
All Seasons. Mobius.
This is a baking book that requires using a lot of different numbers to bake different
desserts. The numbers in this book come in different measurements. I could use this
book to have students convert different measurements and add the numbers together
to determine what is needed to bake the items. The measurements would be in both
whole numbers, and fractions, and potentially even squares/square-roots. This book
would allow my students to use rational and irrational numbers to solve real-world
problems.
2) Frederick, S. (2016). Football stats and the stories behind them: What Every Fan Needs
to Know. Capstone Classroom.

This is another sports book that is all about stats. This book is only about football, so it
would be targeted more towards my football fans in the classroom. This book would be
used to analyze the stats and correlation with success that these stats have. We could
create graphs of the stats and see how they compare with other players at that position
3) Other Source 1: Calving and Hobbes Comic:

This resource is kind of fun, and funny. But I could find multiple different problems from
this comic. I could also have my students help identify what Calvin and Hobbes did
wrong, and how they can correct it.
4) Adams, P. (23 C.E.). The Ultimate Guide To Swimming Pool Construction And
Maintenance For Beginners: Everything You Need to Know about Owning and Caring
for Your Swimming Pool including plumbing, Electrical and Finishing (5th ed.).
This book is about swimming pools. It talks about caring for your swimming pool. A swimming
pool is another great example of something you would use to show volume and how volume
works in real life. I could use this book to build problems from the pools they give, and build
more complex volume problems from it.
5) Havil, J. (2014). The Irrationals: A Story of the Numbers You Can’t Count On.
Princeton University Press.

This book is a book that discusses how the ancient Greeks began to discover irrational
numbers. It talks about the history behind irrational numbers, and how and why they were
discovered. It answers some of the tough questions associated with irrational numbers,
and what makes them so difficult to understand. I would use this book to just introduce
students to what irrational numbers are, and what the history behind them is.