Ben Wood

EDUC 450
Teaching Strategy Reflections
Zoom In, Zoom Out
Zoom In, Zoom Out looks like a good strategy for focusing and understand parts of
something in order to master the whole. I appreciate that this strategy allows you to take things in
bite-sized chunks and builds upon that foundation to make learning new concepts easier. In math,
I might see this strategy used in understanding new formulas or looking at complex proofs. For a
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(basic) example, take the formula for the area of a cylinder, V = r h . If we zoom in to just
r 2 , students may be able to recognize that this is the formula for the area of the 2dimensional circle. If we zoom out and take into account the h in the equation, we see we are
multiplying the area of the circle by the height, essentially extending that area upwards by that
measure. In this way, students may actually understand each component of the formula rather
than memorizing it straight out.
Connect Extend Challenge
CEC is a strategy that helps students think deeper by connecting concepts to prior
knowledge and challenging them to think critically. In math, building on prior knowledge is very
important to learning advanced problem solving methods. I might see this strategy used in math
when introducing a new concept to students. They may be able to connect a formula, a problem
solving strategy, or something else to a new topic that may help make it more manageable. Then,
they could extend it to possible real world applications. The challenge step may have to be

modified, but it could present a problem for the students to solve using what they learned and the
connections that have made.
#Headlines
Headlines is a strategy that helps students concisely summarize a concept or lesson in a
way that make sense to them. I like that this strategy personalizes their thinking in a way that
helps make what theyve learned easier to remember. Teachers could even use this strategy to
collect data on student thinking and check for understanding at the end of class. This strategy
could be used in math to help remember important parts of equations or problem solving
methods, remembering order of operations, definitions or even theory. I could see this being
useful in the history of math when remembering who was responsible for what theorems or math
concepts discovered a long time ago.
Generate, Sort, Connect, Collaborate
This teaching strategy is good for generating lots of ideas on a broad subject and
connecting them together in some way. This strategy is good for collecting lots of different
thoughts and viewpoints from different people on one subject so that other students may see their
thinking and maybe develop new ideas about a subject. In math I may be able to ask students
about one idea (for example, inequalities, integrals, etc.) and have them write down whatever
they know about it, where it may apply to the real world, or how it connects to other areas of
math. After students put their ideas on the board, they could group up their thoughts and connect
the groups to each other, identifying important prior knowledge they may need for the topic or
how it may be used.
Color, Symbol, Image

This strategy is useful for summarizing a topic in a way that students may be able to
connect to personally. The students can choose whatever color, symbol, and image they want to
help them remember what they learned, and it just has to make sense to them. This strategy
might have to be modified for math. For example, students may want to use something like
Subject, Symbol, Example to describe how to solve a specific sort of problem, including
important elements of the problem.
The 4 Cs (My Strategy)
The 4 Cs covers concept, connections, challenges, and changes. It helps to facilitate
discussion in a class. I presented this strategy with an article about cheating in school. The
presentation went fairly well, but I wouldve like the class to discuss more than they did. This
may be a hard strategy to apply to math, but the students could write the topic they are learning
about in the concept box, how that topic relates to other prior knowledge in the connections box,
some problems they may have or examples in the challenges box, and how they may have to
change their thinking to solve the problem in the changes box.