The Teaching Channel

I love periodically checking in on The Teaching Channel.   I have found some great videos on general teaching, tools for teaching ELL's, math videos, etc.  It is devoted to helping all of us be better teachers and to get new ideas for ways to teach students.
I put transformations in the search engine to see what they have to offer.  There were four videos dealing with transformations that showed up on the top of the results.  They ranged between 4 minutes and 9 minutes long, so a nice length.
1. Deepening understanding of transformations.
2. Understanding transformations
3. Collaborative work with transformations.
4. Common issues with transformations.

I watched the first video on deepening understanding. The first thing I noticed was to the left, there was a learning objective, the length of the video and questions to consider while watching the video.  I like that so much.

The video cut between the classroom, the collaborative meeting and interviewing the teacher.  I liked seeing the whole process so that I can implement it at work with other math teachers.

The search also highlighted a blog entry on Formative Assessment that lead me to the blog entry on these four videos indicating that I should watch understanding transformations, common issues, collaborative work and finally deepening understanding.   This information tells me the four are together to form a fuller picture of teaching transformations in a better way. 

The Teaching Channel has 200 videos dedicated to teaching a variety of math topics for all grades.  Once I get back to school, I am going to find time in my schedule to watch the videos. My internet at home is not always that great and videos spend more time starting and stopping than playing.  It is frustrating but if there is a will, there is a way.

Teaching channel and a reading assignment.

I went to a conference this past weekend and in one of the workshops we were shown several different examples of good teaching using The Teaching Channel.  I saw one great lesson on having students sort equations into always, sometimes and never stacks.  The students were working in groups but they had to support their choice with both verbal and visual evidence.  I liked the way you saw the teacher handling the class, explaining and creating a safe environment for students to try.  That is one lesson I want to try.  I saw another teacher have students work a problem on a paper, turn it in and she looked at the answers, sorting the yeses from no's and finding the best no answer.  She would copy the problem on the board and begins by asking students what is done correctly.  After, she then asked if they could find what was not correct and used this as a way of creating a dialog and assessment.  I think I will begin using this next year in my teaching.  I also plan to watch videos over the summer so that I can improve my teaching.
Today in my College prep math class, I gave students a section to read and create a presentation for using Haiku Deck.  Over the last few weeks of school, I want to have them become even more independent  since they are going to college next year.  If I had I movie on the ipads, I could have them take this a step further by importing the presentation into imovie, add sound and create a great presentation.