1. Watch these two videos by Dan Meyer: Math class needs a makeover.
(until 11:38) and Real-Life Math. In two or more paragraphs, express your thoughts about what you can do to keep your students interested in learning math? How can you use what Meyer talked about in your classroom?
Dan Meyer
In Dan Meyer's video Math class needs a makeover., he explains the five symptoms that you are teaching math reasoning wrong. He says that students lack initiative and retention. One thing that I could relate to was that students do not self start. Too many times in high school we have been asked to read the chapter before the next class yet hardly anyone does. On the event we did read it the chances of the entire chapter making sense and remembering it are slim. We as teachers have to remember this and emphasize the major points and leave out the fluff. Students need to be involved in making the problems and they will staying interested. He says we should make the questions shorter and to the point, which I absolutely agree with. If I look at a word problem in math and it is 6 sentences long the thought of weeding through the extra stuff to pull out the important information becomes overwhelming. I don't think we need to make it overly simple but asking questions that are long and drawn out are pointless in my opinion.
In the second video,Real-Life Math, Meyer talks about making math irresistible to your students. He videos himself shooting basketball and turns it into real life math. If students can associate themselves with the problem they will be more apt to stay interested into the problem. I think making math into real life scenarios could be extremely beneficial. I would have loved to put together a project in school turning math into real life. Given we have the right equipment I would like to incorporate some real life math into my lesson plans and experiment to see if my students enjoy it as much as I think I would have.
Barclay,
ReplyDeleteI do not see math related discussions in EDM 310 very often. I think these changes to the math classroom are great! I know I never enjoyed math but by applying it to real life, I think I would have enjoyed it much more. Hopefully you will make your classroom just how Mr. Meyer has described!
Barclay, your views are similar to other peoples which makes your blog relatable and enjoyable to read. I agreed with you when you said “...emphasize the major points and leave out the fluff.” Like so many things it is best to just go straight to the point and not beat around the bush. The directions you wrote read like something Dr. John Strange would write. It took me a minute it remember that is wasn’t his work.
ReplyDeleteSuggestions
One would be to not add extra words when writing, which would be the “fluff”. You wrote “He says we should make the questions shorter and to the point, which I absolutely agree with.” It would read better if written “He says we should make the questions shorter and to the point, and I absolutely agree.” Another would be, you need to add more details so that you may clearly express your thoughts. You wrote of Mr. Meyer explaining the “five symptoms”, but were not specific as to what they were. You need to clearly name and discuss main points when writing about them.
Corrections
You wrote “We as teachers have to remember this and emphasize the major points and leave out the fluff” it should read “We, as teachers, have to remember....” Also, in the same sentence you have too many “and”. it would be better written “...remember to emphasize the major points and leave out the fluff.” The sentence “...he explains the five symptoms that you are teaching math reasoning wrong.” The correct adverb should be “incorrectly”.