This year at the Inquiry Celebration, I attended 1 session regarding my content area (math). These presentations gave insight to how to implement games as a review for tests and how homework affects test grades. I found these presentations to be interesting and gave me some ideas of how to incorporate these two things in my classroom. The results showed that games to not necessarily help students learn and comprehend math concepts better, but they do get the students more engaged. Also, homework does not have a direct effect on test grades. Students may copy answers or just write things down to get credit on their homework, which does not help them at all. In order for homework to be beneficial, it must be relevant and contain more in depth questions rather than just pure computations.
The second session I attended had presentations about differentiated instruction and how having a coach as a teacher affects student behavior. These presentations were very interesting and were put together very well. These presenters were passionate about their topics, which made them enjoyable to watch. I learned that having a coach as a teacher does increase student effort and reduces behavior issues. It helps not only in the classroom, but also at practice.
