I have been interested in Mathematics since as far back as I can remember. Growing up, we didn't have a lot of money and a game I would play is to add up the contents that went into the shopping cart (you know, to keep a keen eye on my mom's spending). All those price tags of 3.49, 6.79 and 1.29, gave me a real world use for using estimation. This practice also allowed me to build skills with number fluency, operations and at the root of it all, what numbers mean.
Within my classroom I push for this fluency. What does this mean? What do you mean by this? At first I was asking these questions because I wanted students to appreciate numbers the way I appreciate numbers. After several years in the classroom it dawned on me, that those questions I was asking extended beyond the Mathematics classroom. Formulas, facts, conversions and theorems can all be looked up, watched, listened too and utilized using other more simple algorithms. What we are doing as educators is helping prepare students for future classes, post-secondary, success within the job market and so on. Being able to know what you mean by this or knowing what this means are essentials to "adulting". I use this example because I want education to divert away from what doesn't work. To find this, we need to ask ourselves, what does this mean? Or, What do we mean by this? If we are giving a Do Now, why are we giving a Do Now. If we have classes structured to separate Science, English, Social Science, P.E. and Art why are we doing this. If we are assigning homework 4 days a week, what do we expect from this. Why, why, why gets a little monotonous, but it is essential in what we do as educators. This year our small site team has decided to stray away from traditional classes. We have short skill classes, long Project Based classes and frequent rotations within the quarters. Why are we doing this? Simple, what we were doing before wasn't working. So we asked ourselves, why are we doing this?
4 Comments
8/31/2017 09:14:27 pm
I really enjoyed your blog. Your last statement that you guys asked yourselves why you were teaching in a way that wasn't working and you decided to change it, is very powerful. A lot of the time teachers don't have the freedom of teaching to the way they want to teach. Sometimes we are stuck with what administration wants and that is not benefiting the students. I am happy that your school is allowing teachers to teach in a project based way and that you guys are seeing improvements in students.
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Diana Moore
9/2/2017 05:39:27 pm
Very interesting perspective on the way you are teaching math. I agree, that everything we do in the classroom should have purpose. I see a lot of teachers assigning warm-up's and homework on a daily basis and yet nothing ever happens with the information gained from this completed data? Is the homework graded to reflect a percent of correctness? Or is the teacher just assigning it a busy work? Excellent points made!
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Alicia Martin
9/4/2017 04:23:33 pm
Thank you for sharing why you have your love for math. I feel it's important, especially in math, to have those real life opportunities. I completely agree with you that asking "why?" is important. We need to make sure we are doing things with a purpose not just to do them. The world is ever changing and we need to make sure the students are prepared for the outside world. One of the statements that stayed with me while watching some of the videos was that we are trying to prepare students for jobs that do not even exist yet. Making sure we have a purpose can help us prepare the students for their next step in life. Thank you for sharing!
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Lisa Gottfried
9/6/2017 05:53:51 pm
"Why" is one of the most powerful questions on earth, in my opinion. I just took a Jo Bowles workshop on Math Mindsets and WOW! I just never knew how creative Math actually is. What other questions would get students to engage in the incredible world of math beside just learning the algorithms?
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Joseph WilliamsI have a love for getting students jazzed about math, art and food. Currently educating youth at an alternative high school program in Portland. Archives
November 2017
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