Blog Post #2: Research the GLE’s (Grade Level Expectations) and Alaska State Student Standards for content and performance for your discipline. What are you teaching at the moment that might be considered a big idea? Why is it a big idea? Anything that might be considered “worth being familiar with” or “Important to know and do?”
In my 6th grade math class we are entering into a unit on fractions. WE are starting out by reviewing part to whole relationships (Big Idea: Fractions can represent part of a whole), then redefined the whole (Big Idea: Fractions can represent more than one), and have just covered benchmark fractions (Big Idea: Knowing what benchmark a fraction is close to can help evaluate expressions that use fractions), and are now moving onto equivalent fractions (Big Idea: Equivalent fractions represent the same amount using different sized parts). These are important big ideas because life does not happen in wholes and it is important to learn how to deal with parts of objects or concepts. These are very important skills and concepts for students to understand, as fractions are carried through the rest of their mathematical career and carried over into many other subjects as well. We are spending a good amount of time making sure our students are very comfortable with these concepts and exploring them from many different modalities in order to reach all students.
