Welcome back to my readers! This week
was another valuable week in my mathematics education as I learned about
different tools and strategies I can use in my mathematics program. They are
tools that can be used to enrich my program by not only engaging my students,
but teaching them skills that are more relevant to real life.
Blended Learning
In class we discussed the pedagogical
method of technological integration and blended learning into math. We learned
that blended learning combines the benefits of face to face teacher instruction
with the exploration that comes with technological integration. I believe that
blended learning strategies are the future of math education because our
students are consumed with technology on a daily basis for recreation and need
to learn how they can use technology to further their education. By completing
my webinar this week I learned that blended learning is a really engaging tool
when paired with activities that your students will find enjoyable and is able
to stimulate meaningful discussion. The role of the teacher then becomes more
of a facilitator that guides the students in the right direction and asks
effective prompting questions that gets the students to think deeper about what
they are learning. All of this is beneficial to students because it lets them
learn at their own pace and have their own chances to explore.
Here is a video I found helpful about Blended Learning.
Open Ended Questions
For this week my webinar focus was on
the topic of open ended questioning in mathematics instruction. Through my
research and preparation in this topic I learned about how much our students
can benefit from posing questions that can multiple solutions and multiple strategies
to obtain an answer. With these questions the teacher becomes more focused on
assessing the mathematical processes used in answering the question, rather
than just being fixated on the final solution. In particular, students work on
their ability to reason and make mathematical decisions based on those reasons.
In my placement I tried as often as I could to pose a question to students
which was completely open and had multiple ways you could use to solve the
answer. It was this type of activity where I heard the most mathematical
discussion between peers which I believe is essential to helping students grow
their knowledge on a subject. Not only that, open ended questions allows for
all students to be able to get involved because they are accessible enough for
any student, yet students at the higher levels can have a chance to challenge
their ability to justify an answer.
Here is a link I found helpful when trying to find examples of effective open ended tasks.
https://www.youcubed.org/tasks/
Here is a link I found helpful when trying to find examples of effective open ended tasks.
https://www.youcubed.org/tasks/
Big Ideas vs Little Details As I completed the online modules for this week I learned about the importance of teaching our students about the big ideas, rather than the minute details. I remember when I was a student how focused I was on the drill and practice questions that I didn’t understand what the main purpose of it was. I believe that teachers need to teach their students the main ideas of a topic and design questions in order to achieve that goal so students gain a deeper understanding of the topic without getting lost in the shallow details.
Hey Zach!
ReplyDeleteMuch like yourself, I also noticed how enriching Blended Learning can be after completing my webinar. It can be really helpful to add these online components to our pedagogical approach, especially in terms of creating student-generated knowledge.
I like your idea of incorporating many open-ended questions into Mathematics. After learning about Rich Tasks in the previous weeks, I feel as though open-ended questions may be some of the "richest" tasks we can pose to our students, due to the fact that there are multiple ways to approach these open-ended questions and varying degrees of engagement.
And thank you for providing that link - I'll definitely check it out when creating open ended tasks for my students! :)
Hey Zach,
ReplyDeleteI read James' post this week, which touched upon yours and Kaytlyn's webinar and I really wish I had seen it! I love the idea of posing open ended questions to facilitate math discussions. It is something that I did here and there in my placements, but never spent a lot of time doing it. I will not ensure to add as much time for open ended questions in my math class.
You also mentioned big ideas vs little ideas and I think using open ended questions can really help students to understand big ideas in their own way. We need to give less attention to the steps and details and more on the mathematical discussions and ideas that students come up with.
Thanks for sharing Zach, great post!
Great blog post Zach,
ReplyDeleteI really like your explanation of blended learning and the video puts the information into perspective. Blended learning is a new concept to me and I had never experienced it before. I think that blended learning is a great way like you said for the teacher to become more of a facilitator while the students take charge of their own learning through the use of online learning methods. I liked how you mentioned big ideas versus memorization because it is important for students to learn big ideas rather memorize formulas just to achieve a certain score on a test and then forget all of the information they just memorized. If a student understands the big ideas then often they are able to come up with the formulas on their own because the problem makes more sense to them.
Carla