New Insights & Their Implications

I want to talk about Cognitively Guided Instruction and how much I love it. My internship teacher used this approach with her first graders. So I have seen it modeled several times. When she first asked me about it I was very unfamiliar with it and felt so behind. Little did I know that I would learn about it soon.  The principal asked my field based supervisor to go toa a training workshop and teach it to the other staff in the school. I remember one day she got a substitute and I observed her teaching math to other classes other than her own using the CGI approach.  I watched her use CGI with her students and demonstrate it for other teachers but never really understood until this class. What I particularly like about this approach is how students have a choice for which strategy they want to use in solving the problem. I also like how they can choose to use or not to use manipulatives. What I really like about this program is how all the students come together at the end and a select few will share how they worked through the problem. It helps us as teachers know their understanding of the content and helps kids think of other ways work. One thing that I loved is that my teacher used Math Journals. She would print off a story problem for each child and they would glue them in their notebook. These stories were made fun by using different the names of her students.  She would then ask them to write in marker because she wanted to see their thinking and that it was okay to make mistakes. I would never have thought of that! It is a great idea! I feel so fortunate to have been able to learn about this approach in class and to be able to see it in action. I know that a lot of teachers out there are now just learning how to implement CGI. As future teachers we will be able to go into the schools with the training already under our belts! This is something that we are going to need to know because Math will most likely not be taught the traditional old way. More and more schools are adopting this approach.