Kayleigh Poudrier, Jakara Small. 05/02/2017. Ma112-002.

Osewalt also suggests in her article, 5 Common Techniques for Helping Struggling Students, using mnemonics helps students to remember and apply concepts. Simple phrases are useful not only to those who struggle academically, but for all students.

Hello and I hope that everyone is ready to gear up on a new adventure of math. Here I'm again , attempting the class again, this time I am only taking one class. I drop the this class before after two weeks because I found to be overwhelming, due to me working two job and a fulltime student. As one of my favorite quote, " If you don't like something change it, if you can't change it, change your attitude ". (Maya Angelou). As you can see, I made the change, drop one job, and here I am again ready to succeed for excellence.

Memorization has no real thinking. For students, school is just trying to remember what the teacher has told them. When actually in school, students are supposed to learn how everything works and think through problems. Ben Orlin, a high school teacher and tutor in Oakland, California, asked his students what the sine of pi/2 is and they all said, “One.” Therefore, he skipped the lesson before he later realized that they all just memorized the fact and they did not know what it meant. According to Orlin, “A knowing without learning, of answering without understanding.” A student will memorize what they need ten minutes before a class and then forget everything after class (Orlin). This means students are not learning in school. In sixth grade, Ben Orlin tried to memorize prepositions by reciting them to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.” He says, “Memorizing a list of prepositions isn’t half as knowing what role a preposition plays in the language” (Orlin). I fully agree with him. He should have known what a

Every Monday and Wednesday, I wake up anxious for my last class to end, so I can head to the Palmer Home for Children in Columbus, Mississippi. The Palmer Home is a non-profit organization providing free residential care to children in need of viable placement. When I was first introduced to the Palmer Home and its purpose, I knew that I wanted to assist the students in any way possible. At the Palmer Home, I am a mathematics tutor helping students in various math topics such as Geometry, Trigonometry, Algebra I, and Algebra II. Upon arrival, I see in the distance bright eyes and waving hands excited to see my car pull up in the parking lot.

The quality of the research problem stated in the article was well put together. The researcher stated the problem clearly and identified why it was a problem. The gap in the literature the study is attempting to fill is communication of mathematical thinking. Often time’s students cannot intellectually explain how they got to their answer. When asked to explain, students have a hard time using the correct vocabulary terms. The student 's’ response does not demonstrate the mathematical thinking process; rather it merely demonstrates the student 's’ ability to memorize and recall a method of solving a problem to find a correct answer. Kostos, K., & Shin, E. K. (2010).

How is it possible for human beings to remember things as complex as we do? We can memorize grocery lists, an order at a drive-thru, vocabulary for a difficult test, and many other things. This is possible due to mnemonics. Mnemonics are memory tools we use to learn complicated information (Memory Improvement Techniques). There are many ways to use this tool, such as associating the alphabet with the first letter of words or by creating a rhyme, but one has to know how to use and practice it for it to work.

Many students struggle through their mathematics subject from elementary up to secondary. This is why many professionals and educators tend to cure these struggle experienced by many students. According to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM, 2000), Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (PSSM) urge teachers and students to use multiple representations during mathematics discussion. The PSSM clearly stated that students should “ create and use representation to organize, record and communicate mathematical ideas , select, apply and translate among mathematical representations to solve problems and use representations to model and interpret physical, social, and mathematical phenomena. This leads to the usage of the so called “mathematics manipulative”.

Graduated instructional sequence is useful for teachers of secondary mathematics learners. Especially helpful for those having difficulty in algebra, this strategy is potentially more effective on those who struggle with conceptual understanding of numbers, symbols, and the relationship between them. However, it is useful for teaching fractions, percentages, geometry, and many other concepts as well. (Leone, P., Wilson, M. & Mulcahy, C., 2010) Additionally, certain

The main idea of this article is to teach teachers how make their own reflections every time they implement a mathematical task as a framework. According to the article, it is very important to reflect teaching individually and with colleagues. Stein and Smith explain that making reflections might be a difficult task to do since teachers do not know where to focus on. They also mention how their experiences with middle school teachers in the QUASAR (Quantitative Understanding: Amplifying Student Achievement and Reasoning) 
project have helped them to see that by focusing on mathematical tasks and their phases of classroom use can assist teachers when making reflections. Another important point that they talk about in this article is the way they explain how important is to focus on mathematical tasks. They explain two ways on how to present a task, in which teachers could either implement lower-level demands or higher-level demands. Lower- level demands consist of letting students memorize procedures without making connections. On the other hand, they describe higher-level demands as giving the students the opportunity to think more in depth, while at the same time making connections. For instance, in the article they show us a picture, where memorization becomes a way to learn that 1/2= 0.50=50% and no connections at all. Procedures with connections, in this case, higher- level demands, are more complex examples. For example, “using a 10 × 10 grid, identify the decimal

Both the overlearning and the spacing effect strategies have also been applied to mathematical learning. When tested, overlearning showed no difference in the short term results compared to the long term results. Whereas the students who used the spacing effect showed higher scores than those who used mass studying. Those who used the spacing effect “outscored the massers (74% vs. 49%)” (Rohrer 2007). With this being said, most mathematic textbooks utilize overlearning and massing even though research shows that these strategies are highly ineffective. Rohrer suggests that the practice problems provided in

Predating my college life, I held a strong desire to understand complex mathematical concepts. I would spend countless hours trying to get ahead of class, to satisfy my curiosity on what awaited me in future lessons. At home, I studied and did my homework by myself, as everyone was always busy. It was because of this, that my progress in learning was somewhat limited to grade-specific workbooks that my parents could buy and I could only self-study to such an extent. However, my father discovered a new way for me to excel.

Miller stressed the idea that any strategy that will allow a child to understand the context is important. She identified a myriad of strategies and techniques that she has found success with in the math classroom. First, she tries to identify academic terms that will give her the most bang for her buck. In other words, it is worth it to spend the time preteaching words that are useful and relevant in math vocabulary. According to Miller, words that are significant are the ones that occur frequently or that are key to understanding what the question is asking. She noted that in creating assignments, it is necessary to be mindful about using these vocabulary terms in the lesson. Most importantly, teachers need to “give students as much frequent

About Mnemonics: Mnemonic devices are useful memory aids that can be applied to many different aspects of daily life. There are always certain tidbits of information that people just can’t seem to remember in the form they are presented. People rely on mnemonics when they create some association between that information they wish to remember and other concepts that they already know, or find easier to remember. The use of mnemonics has also been shown to be of significant value in the field of education. Manalo has shown that instruction using a specific type of mnemonics known as “process mnemonics” produced improvements of mathematical ability in students classified as learning disabled [3].Process mnemonics are used

If students are focusing all of their time on trying to determine the meaning of a single word then they are not able to keep their attention on comprehending the text in its entirety. Teachers support students’ comprehension by teaching vocabulary that is integral giving meaning to the text. Students need multiple interactions with seeing and using the words. The best way to build this vocabulary is by relating the new words to words that students already know and activating their prior knowledge.

Although mathematics has not changed, the manner in which it is taught has changed in substantive ways in recent years that are far removed from rote memory drills and traditional dusty chalkboards. As one mathematics educator emphasizes, "Chalkboards have come a long way, haven't they? In the past, the standard writing surface in the mathematics