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.