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.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, September 8, 2008
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.
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!!!
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!!!
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