Six life skills

Book Review for:

Book Title: Beyond Behavior Management

Author: Jenna Bilmes

The Six Life Skills Children Need to Thrive in Today’s World

 - As teachers, parents, and loved ones; we want children to gain respect for others around them. We want them to accept difference and be able to thrive in the world today.

 - Children learn most from imitation. BE THE ROLE MODEL in everything you teach.

Children develop and learn respect through many life’s challenges and harnesses. Especially when it comes to sharing, speaking to their peers, and holding in anger when it hits. I believe that it is our role to help them grow in respect.

                                                                                                                                                In order for a child can develop adequate respect, it is essential for the child to develop six very important life skills:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

1.    Attachment

·      A feeling of security, having all physical needs met

·      To do: give the child a hug if he/she needs it, be ready to listen when he/she talks (possible during recess), make the child feel safe in every way you can, smile when the child walks in the door, so that the classroom will be a warm place for him.

·      “I have a grown-up who cherishes me and keeps me safe!”

2.    Affiliation

·      Feeling needed in the classroom, a part of the classroom, having friends to play with

·      To do: assign roles for every child, “turn on lights,” “put scissors in place.” If child doesn’t come to school one day, make sure everyone notices that the child isn’t in school and that his role will be left undone, or maybe someone will want to do it for him? Assign children into groups if they have a hard time making friends.

·      “I can have a friend and be a friend!”

3.    Self-regulation

·      Being able to control impulses (since the child feels wanted and affiliated, he/she feels bad for behaving unwantedly)

·      To do: Have activities and through out every day, make it clear that every action will face a consequence. Also, make it clear to the children that NOT feelings control their actions but that THEY themselves have the power to control their behavior.

·      “I can manage my strong emotions and am in control of my behavior!” 

4.    Initiative

·      Being able to try something new, ask questions,

·      To do: model initiative, choose a book to read, ask child what book he/she wants to read.

·      “I am constantly growing and changing and learning new things!”

5.    Problem Solving

·      Being able to solve a problem.

·      To do: in everyday situations, model by asking, “What can we do about it?” If the classroom pet is mellow ask “what can we do?” If children aren’t getting a long ask, “what can we do about it?” Add hints like, “some people choose to share, some choose to take turns.”

·      “I can solve problems and resolve conflicts!”

6.    Respect

·      Understanding that everyone has unique characteristics and cultures

·      To do: Activities that will open children’s eyes to the fact that they are all very different and very unique; they are made to do a certain goal in life, to be successful.

·      “I have unique gifts and challenges, and so do others!”

Children's mathematics

In response to: Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics by Liping Ma

The two chapters of the book analyze the various methods used in elementary mathematics. The author looks very deep in the different methods used in the U.S. and China that are very different when compared to each other. The subtraction and multiplication problems that the author uses are identical but are explained very differently using various methods from both countries. The chapters overview teachers’ understanding of certain math concepts and their knowledge of regrouping and decomposing numbers.

            I liked the information in these chapters; it was very, very interesting for me. I thought I would end up just skimming through the 50 pages; I ended up reading precisely every word to word. I felt that it did challenge my beliefs. I used to think that teaching kids was all about telling them how to do it and teach them certain tricks so they would remember. For example, when multiplying; I thought a teacher must just explain that zeros are a necessity and end the conversation at that. However, the conversations brought up about explaining the zeros and knowing why the zeros are there made me realize that it is mandatory to explain to students exactly when they are doing and why. It makes it ore interesting for them to work on the math problems when they know exactly what they are doing.

            Many methods of subtracting and multiplication are used in the two countries. One of the methods discussed is regrouping. With regrouping, you can regroup numbers in many different ways. 143 can be regrouped into three: 100, 40, and 3. Another method is composing numbers; it is a nice method has great wording: composing, decomposing. It makes sense that you can compose or decompose a number. When a number in the ones place isn’t big enough, you can decompose a number in the tens place to get 10 ones. This method, compared to the traditional method is much more focused on mathematics instead of a “neighbor” that one borrows from. For multiplication, there is the distributive law method, which explains why the zeros should be in the multiplication problem. There is also the Place Value method where teacher explain that when a student is solving for the tens place, it makes sense to put the answers also in the tens place.

            The traditional methods are also discussed in the chapters. It looks like the traditional method for subtraction isn’t very helpful since it uses the word “borrow.” It isn’t very mathematical to teach children to “borrow” from numbers when they really aren’t going to give it back. It is said that using the composing and regrouping method is much more focused on mathematics. For multiplication, the distributive method was discussed and seemed very helpful to explain to students why the zeros must be included in the problem. However, the students responded that they like the traditional method for multiplication, especially for higher numbers.

            The information given in the chapters was similar to what we learn in class. We learned that the idea of “borrowing” from another number isn’t very mathematical at all. We also talked about the regrouping of numbers in order to subtract or even multiply and about the distributive property that I have never heard of. It was great extra information as well.

The use of manipulative section was very interesting to me, because manipulatives and number charts don’t really teach children about regrouping and decomposing numbers when counting and subtracting with them. However, some teachers came up with ideas like using dimes and pennies or putting a rubber band around 10 sticks as a 1 ten. Their ideas seemed very reasonable.

I enjoyed reading the different math methods; a lot of it actually surprised me. It was very surprising to read about the composition method since it was my very first time reading about it.  I enjoyed reading about the multiplication problem (students not putting the zero for a place holder) and how teachers respond to it and tried to think of ways to better explain it to students. The information was great.