One of my colleagues wrote about being drawn to T-GEM and I thought that was such a simple yet accurate description of my reactions and professional opinions as well. One of the things I appreciate the most is that the T-GEM cycle continues repeatedly throughout a lesson, unit, day, etc. This is the most reflective of what we actually do with information; we get or discover new information, understand it, and reorganize our knowledge, understanding and beliefs.
When I think about concepts or ideas that are challenging for students to master, fractions immediately comes to mind. Especially operations with fractions. When using technology to enhance understanding, I believe students need to see and experience a variety of representations and scenarios.
Generate
http://www.abcya.com/fraction_percent_decimal_tiles.htm
This fraction resource gives students an opportunity to explore and understand equivalent fractions, an important concept for adding and subtracting. They can drag, drop, and manipulate the fraction bars to generate an and reaffirm their understanding. Students are given a few simple practice questions to model and try. For example, 2/3 + ½
Evaluate
https://www.visualfractions.com/AddEasyCircle/
At this stage, students engage in more in-depth evaluation of the concept. They can manipulate more of the conditions to test their ideas and assumptions.
Modify
http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/mec/flash/index.html?url=Data/3/B/A3B3.swf&launch=true
Using the information and understanding developed in the first two phases, students can modify and confirm their understanding by exploring this lesson.
One of the most important components throughout these phases, is the dialogue between students, and between students and teacher(s). Alone, these resources and T-GEM does not have as amplified impact but combining the power makes it all more effective and efficient.
Hi Allison,
These are great resources that I will bookmark for future use! Thanks for sharing. I really appreciate how you mentioned that the most critical part of these lessons is the dialogue between students and teachers. Having access to these websites makes it easy for teachers to assign and have students complete without finding out what their actual conceptual understandings are. Creating strong teacher questions that can uncover students thought processes and ways to make their thinking visual is essential for discovering their understandings and moving them along appropriately.
Thanks again!
Sarah
Hi Sarah!
That is a good point! I think with any resources, if we don’t consider students and teachers the most important we aren’t any further ahead.
Ally
Hi Allison! After reading through your plan and particularly looking at the resources, I’m intrigued by the Add Easy Circle site. While I don’t think the second graders I work with would be ready for this yet, I could see it making a nice tool for the Generate portion of TGEM, while you have it listed as Evaluate. I understand why you have it there, but I also really like the ‘guess and check’ nature of it for exploration.
Thanks for sharing!
Hello Allison,
I like that you identify T-GEM as a cycle that repeats. I agree that the beauty of T-GEM is in its simplicity as a concept. It really is a very direct philosophical approach to facilitating learning. Applying in regularly when designing lesson plans is bound to help the student.
Its also important that the students are familiar with the conceptual approach. This has become very apparent to me as I am going through WASC accreditation with my school. As a staff we came up with “Student Learning Outcomes” that fit with our vision and that every unit and every lesson can be tied back to. I occurred to me recently that we were not articulating this language enough to the students and that in understanding the outcomes or philosophy they can better understand how to learn.
I believe the best way to learn ultimately to teach. Ultimately I wonder if sharing a philosophical approach can have long term benefits for the learner as they progress in university?