Week 13: November 24 - 25

This is a short week at school so I thought I would allow the students to work on their creativity. Each student in the trig classes were to choose a topic in 2nd semester trig that they struggled with at first that they now understand. They are responsible for coming up with a unique way to teach it to someone that may have never seen it before. They are encouraged to find a real world example of what they are trying to teach and use it to help explain what they are doing. The projects are due the last 2 weeks of the minisemester when they will present them to the class. Some students began writing songs to various Christmas song melodies as we are heading into the Christmas season. A pair of students are working on a skit relating degree to angle measure in the unit circle. I have had a tough time not butting in when I hear conversations go in a direction that would not lead to a productive project but instead will guide them to look up what they need to make a better project.

The Concepts of algebra classes are working on their review projects on topics that they need help with for the EOCT . We have about 2 that are ready out of 12. I am interested to see what they come up with. With most of the people in this class gearing up to teach gifted students, I am taking it in order to get new ideas and creative ideas to teach my tech and college prep kids. We do not have gifted classes in the school that I teach in so I am not getting certified to teach gifted ,but to teach in new and more creative ways. My goal was to not teach in a traditional mannor, but allow my students to be active intheir own learning...it is a challenge to let go of the reigns!!

Week 12: Nov. 17 - 20

I have definately noticed that as I have been working on my own level of creativity I have allowed myself to release the control that I had always had to have and let the students have more control and influence on the activities/ projects that we have delved into. I would teach something in maybe a creative way, but I had not allowed the student's creativity play a major role in the past. I have tried to develop lessons that have encouraged that and though it does not always work the way that I would have hoped, I am definately better at developing student oriented tasks than I was at the beginning. I still need a lot of work and will continue to stretch my own creative mind as I do with my kids.

Week 11: Nov. 10 - 14

Well, my creative juices were struggling last week. I was sick and only worked 3 days and then was out of town for 4 days. But we are back on track. During the week last week my concepts class decided to come up with with their own method of reviewing for the eoct. Each student is going to take a unit and develop an activity to review or teach the unit to the class. They may do a powerpoint of key terms/ideas, they can do a skit, song, whatever it is that they want the class to do to get involved in the activity. Several of the students are developing games. The discussion was that they learned it better if they had the opportunity to teach it to others. I am looking forward to seeing what they do.

For the Trig classes we have them working on identifying trig graphs in the real world. They are to find a real world phenomenon that they can model with a sinusoidal function. They are to write up the problem, solve it and then present their problem to the class. More info on this to come.

Week 10: Nov. 3 - 7

The trig classes are brainstorming about their projects for this semester. I thought of even doing a sort-of invention convention with them as well. Many of them are graduating or this may be there last math class and I would love to have them do something interesting that they could take with them. I also have thought of having them do a role play using the trig function graphs and where the graphs are seen in the real world. We will finalize the project ideas this week.

The concept classes are moving right along. We are still struggling with deciding how to creatively work on our weaknesses for the EOCT and is in a month. I am really struggling with how to do that, but am still working on it. I thought of having them make a scrapbook of the key items that they have learned with properties, pics, etc. Again, we will have to finalize something this week.

Week 9 Oct 27 - Oct. 31

Trig classes are making headway with learning the foundations that will help them survive the rest of the semester. They are anxious and excited as many of them are graduating in December. Many of the concepts that they are learning are foreign to them as the material is brand new. They don't know what a radian is or how to connect it to what they know. We spent a lot of time just letting them become familiar with all of the new terminology and how they worked with what they did know already. I had the students come up with a creative way to remember the properties of sine, cosine, and tangent. One student wrote a song to Frère Jacques that told of the properties of all 3. It was very amusing. I have decided that my students are probably much more creative than I am. I guess that is why my skill is to work on just that.

The concepts students are working on their stories for the areas that they feel good about. I am excited to see what they come up with.

Week 8 10/20 - 10/ 24

Time seems to fly by. Having an EOCT this semester, I have been really looking at new and creative ways to get the students involved in preparing for this test. In the past, I have had pre, mid and post tests for them to determine their individual areas of weakness which I still do, but I have not had them do anything creative or new with that knowledge other than have a notebook of topics that they could pull from to do extra practice. I have really struggled to come up with a way to do that. I decided to have them help me. We brainstormed a list of ways that they could review for the EOCT and for ways that we could work on their own individual weaknesses. They decided that they wanted to make games to review for the test. Each pair of students chose a category and is responsible for that review game. Coming up with ideas for the areas of weakness was harder. One idea consisted of researching the topic on the internet and summarizing their findings to share with the class. Another student suggested having the students that were good in one area write a short story about the topic to explain it to others and make a notebook of everyones contribution. For areas where all the students were weak, we kind of did an attribute listing where we listed the attributes of the items that we were good at and then tried to link those with the ones that were weaker to find relationships between the topics that we could use to help us learn those better. This will be an ongoing process for the rest of the semester with this group so we will work on these strategies continuously.

In the trig classes, we are using a lot of hands-on activities to get them involved with the trig functions and their graphs. The projects that they turned in at the end of last semester are really amazing. I am working on what to do this semester that would be similar to what they have done.

10/13 - 10/17

The week of the 13th was the 1st week of our new semester. I am working on brainstorming for projects/activities that I can continue to do this semester. I am really struggling trying to get these new classes up and running. I know that I am extremely busy with taking 3 classes, working, and my son (age 4) taking baseball for the first time, but it seems my students are even more distracted. They could not remember that in a right triangle to find the missing angle to subtract the acute angle from 90. I almost passed out. This is by far one of the weakest groups I have had in a while and will have to devote some time to coming up with activities that really gets them involved and gets them learning.

Week 6: 10/6 - 10/10

This is the week of exams. We have exams Wednesday and Thursday. I hope to try a creative way to review some topics with the classes this week. I thought about having the trig students make connections between the topics using several strategies. Concepts has to write as part of their exam and I am working with them to take on a different role in their writing of the problems. They could "be the x in the radicand" and talk about how they want to be alone and what they have to go through to be alone. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

Week 5: 9/29 - 10/3

The Advanced Algebra and Trig students are working on their projects. They are due on 10/9 so I will be able to discuss more about how my 1st big venture into creativity went. They seem to struggle with how to approach finding the information more than the creative aspect of presenting the material in a non-traditional way. Several have saught help from other teachers to understand the research they are finding. I have received cds of songs they wrote about their mathematicians, story books, and power points of short stories. We will compile the presentations together chronologically to be presented.

Concepts of Algebra is working on writing more. I am having them analyze problems that may be "worked wrong" to determine mistakes that may have been made and then teach the student that made the mistake how to better understand the problem. I have several ideas to try next semester with both of the classes as we move into other material.

Week 4: 9/22 - 9/26

I am trying to incorporate as much creativity as possible. I am finding it more difficult as our semester comes to an end when I am pushed to finish the material for county "benchmark" exams and for final exams. We have 9 week semesters rather than 18 so it often gets difficult to incorporate lessons or projects toward the end of the semester.
An update on what my classes have been working on. The trig classes are working on their projects. Several are still having a difficult time really getting into their creative presentation of their material. I do have some doing skits, short stories, and even a music video. We hope to pull it all together electronically as kind of a yearbook for the last 400 years of mathematics. The projects are due next week, so I hope to have some ideas on how to tweak the project next time to make it more creative. In the concepts classes, they struggled so hard to not repeat rules or explanations that I may have used. We had explanations dealing with football and gaining and losing yards. We had holes and mounds of sand on the beach representing positive and negative numbers. I had a student use her checkbook and printed out deposit slips and withdrawal forms to illustrate adding and subtracting. I was really impressed with how some of the students really got into making sure their "friend" understood how to add and subtract integers and what it really means.

I have several ideas planned for next mini-semester which starts Oct. 13th. Next week won't leave much room for new activities or projects with exams, but we will pick back up on the week after.

Update 9/15 - 9/19

I am learning. I can definately say that I am trying new things with my classes. Some are working wonderfully, while others I need to revamp and try again next semester. In my concepts class we have begun more assignments involving writing. Yesterday I had them explain or teach adding and subtracting integers to a friend of theirs that had never seen it done before. The only stipulation was that they could not teach rules, they had to explain it in a way that their friend could understood what was meant by the positive and negative numbers. Everyone in the class was to come up with a different way of going about it. They are due today, so we will see how that goes and I will report on that again next week. In my Trig classes, we are working on the digital newspaper that covers the years of 1600 - 2000. It was amazing watching them come up with new ideas to cover their years. Some of them are truly excited about doing something so new and inventive. I am looking forward to seeing what they are going to come up with in a couple of weeks when we put it all together.

I am going to continue to develop new activities and tasks that promote student creativity. This has definately been a challenge, but I think that in the long run I will have learned more about my students and myself and how to better teach the class in the future.

9/8 - 9/12 Creativity in the math classroom update

Well in the Concepts of Algebra class the fraction projects were a challenge. I had several groups hit the ground running and designed wonderful lessons and activities for the students in the class to participate in. I really enjoyed seeing what these students had to offer to the lesson and the other students seemed to really enjoy playing the games or participating the activities. I also had students that had no idea of anything to do. I had to help them come up with ideas of things that they could do in order to tie in the fractions to things that they were interested in.

Many students in the Advanced Algebra and Trig classes were not all too enthused about doing a project. We brainstormed about putting together a digital newspaper in which different students take on different spans of years and research the mathematics that occured during that time and its significance of what we know and do today. We brainstormed about the types of ways that individual students could display or write up their time period. We discussed short stories, obituaries, cartoons, classifieds, etc. Students posed ideas based on what they were interested in and what they enjoyed doing. I was thrilled with the ideas of a lot of the students. Several were obviously anti-anything. They did not want to think or be creative at all, they just wanted to be taught the curriculum and move on. I still need to work with them.

The characteristics of creative people that we read about that applied to me were: I thought that I was intelligent which seemed to overlap creativity quite a bit. I never considered a persons intelligence to be related to their creativity. I have always been flexible in my thinking and loved to hear and explore new and insightful ideas about anything. I have always been a risk taker and would say that I would do anything once. I am by nature curious. Especially as my son gets older and starts questioning everything. His curiosity encourages me to be more so.

My flexibility and intelligence I hope helps me to continue to create and think of new creative tasks for the students to do. I want to spark their interests and their ability to think outside the box. As a risk taker that will try anything once allows me to try new things whether they work well or not. That is what I have done so far. I have tried new lessons and activities and noted what worked well and what did not so that the next one may be better. Maybe by the end I will have developed lessons and projects that I will be able to use again the next semester.

Week 1

I am trying to design lessons or projects in order to promote my students thinking and creativity.

For the week of 9/2 - 9/5:

I actually discussed the project with my Advanced Algebra and Trig classes the week before. I opened up a discussion on what type of project that they may be interested in doing either as a class or as individuals. I really just wanted to see what type of information that I got back from them. I had already brainstormed a lot and knew what type of things that I wanted for them to do. I let them think about it over the weekend and them on Tues. 9/2 I brought it up for discussion again. Many students really had no idea of anything that they wanted to do. I posed some suggestions such as a chronological newspaper over the centuries where differents students focused on a certain century to research the mathematics that occured. I also discussed them creating ways to teach various topics that they know to those that were absent. We have left it this week as still brainstorming. We will finalize the projects next week.

In the concepts of Algebra class, we were beginning a unit on fractions. I asked the students to choose a topic in fractions that they wanted to work with and develop a lesson and activity to teach the topic. They were given 3 days in class to develop the activity and lesson and a portion of the classes each day I worked with the individual groups in order to clarify any questions they have and to make sure their activity was appropriate for the class. Some of the groups are obviously made of more creative minds than others, but I hope as I continue this type of activity the other students will open up to be more creative.

This is definately something that will continue to be a struggle for me. It is a challenge to come up with ways for students to show their creativity in mathematics when you are not used to thinking so hard about the lessons.

My creative skill

I have played the piano, I have danced. I played sports and sewed and experienced as much as I could fit into my life. I have always enjoyed doing and trying new things. I went into mathematics. I assume that I liked the rigidness of it. There was a certainty about it. I guess I felt like I was in control, there was no variability in the outcomes. I knew if I was right or wrong and how to correct it if I wasn't. As a teacher, I have come up with creative activities to teach a topic, but it has always been me being the creative one and having my students just do something different. So, though many of the skills that others are trying are not related to school, my biggest challenge and stretch for myself is to try to make lessons that allow my students to be creative. I felt that I would benefit from the challenge as well as my students.

My hope is to develop tasks and lessons that allow my students to explore their own creative talents and skills. So far I have brainstormed and come up with a few and boy, this is harder than I thought!!!