Lasting Memories

I guess the thing that I will always remember about my first teaching experiences will be catching the boys lighting off fireworks in the bathroom. It was 3:30 on Friday and I was just going to use the staff washroom before I left. There was a commotion in the boys room (they say "toilet" in England) as I walked past so I peaked in. It seemed fine, just some kids fooling around with each other. But, just as I was putting the key in to the lock for the staff room I heard the firework go off.It was one of those ones that makes a fizzing sound and sprays out different coloured flames. "Bummer," I thought. I coral ed up a bunch of teenage boys and marched them off to the authorities without further problems.

I realize that this doesn't have much to do with education or teaching, but it is what I will always remember.

Reflections on Quick Write/Poem

Well, I enjoyed the quick write so much that I used this as tool in one of my lessons last week. The kids weren't too excited, but they got to the heart of the subject and did it on their own. I didn't have them write poems as I think they would have revolted. Maybe if I was spending more time in the class like during the long practicum.

Strengths:
So, the strong point for me was this gave students the tools to verbalize mathematical ideas in their own words and actually see that mathematics is not so abstruse, the words and meanings are chosen carefully and often have real life relevance. If you can get them to change their thinking about the world at large it stops being "just math" and becomes a thinking process. In my class students were so surprised by the quick write (and the poster that I followed it up with) that they exclaimed "this isn't what you do in math class!" But, by the end of the class I'd gotten them to "discover" a theorem, as well as write and draw.

Weakness:
At first, it might be very difficult to motivate with these tactics. Not all kids like writing so getting them going is tough. Oh well.

Poem 0

Micro Teaching Reflection

I thought our lesson went over really well overall. We kept student's interest levels up through the whole lesson. I think people were enthused by the historical perspective, as well as the problems we did in class and assigned for "homework."

Although people did enjoy themselves there were many complaints about our lack of clearly prescribed (to the students) learning outcomes. So, most people didn't see the mathematical reasons for the exorcises. We also ran short on time which cut off a lot of the discussion we were going to have about error, methods, and everyday applications. Oh well.

I wonder if our "class" had a copy of our lesson plan as the lesson was being taught would the feedback be better? I think that it would be easier to see where people's lessons went off course if we could see what that course was supposed to be.

As for my thoughts on our presentation, I'm feeling much more comfortable in front of the group. It's funny how when I started juggling everybody immediately started to pay attention. That may be something to think about. From there, I definitely felt the compression of time. What I'd wanted to be a leisurely discussion ended up being a rushed presentation. I hope to learn more about this time management thing in the classroom over the next couple of weeks.

Simmt Article

What is "citizenship education?" Or rather, what is the goal of "citizenship education?" I only ask because I'm not quite sure. In my mind the goal should be to create citizens who are empowered, citizens who are not easily exploited, and citizens who are informed (to name a few criteria). Part of this is being able to follow and critically examine current events. Is it possible to understand completely a budget and its effect on your life if you can't understand what the numbers mean? Clearly no. So how can one be informed for elections if they are innumerate? They can't. This is just the very minimum that one should be learning from math class. As Ms. Simmt stated in the article, math is much more than just numbers and facts, it is a way of critically thinking and problem solving. It seems to me that these are two goals of education in any subject area. So if one of the goals of other classes is citizenship education, then that goal is shared by mathematics.

Micro-Teaching Number 2

Lesson Plan:

Learning Outcomes: Be confident in making estimations, understand error in estimation, problem solving.

Hook: Fermi brief introduction and story about estimating TNT in atomic bomb. Talk about in everyday life when we use estimation: tipping, tax, time, distances (driving).

Pretest: How many 10-dollar bills would it take to cover the surface of Canada? Answer: 950 trillion!
Canada: 9 984 670 km^210
Dollar bill: 1.05*10^-8 km^2
950 trillion.

Lesson Part 1: Understand the problem -> Think of a plan -> Carry out the plan

Go through the example and how we would solve it using those three steps.

Activity: In groups of 3-4, hand out one problem to be solved by the group in the same way we have just shown. Each group will have basically the same problem, but one group has access to computers, one has access to calculators only, one has no computer/calculator, and one has limited information from the problem. Question: How many songs does a radio station play per week? Groups 1-3 will be told it is a classical station.

After 5 mins, have groups share their answer and how they got it. After they've all shared talk about error and which group they think was closest in their estimation.

Post-Test: Assign a few problems for homework.

Summary/Conclusion: Scientists often look for Fermi estimates of the answer to a problem before turning to more sophisticated methods to calculate a precise answer. This provides a useful check on the results: where the complexity of a precise calculation might obscure a large error, the simplicity of Fermi calculations makes them far less susceptible to such mistakes. (Performing the Fermi calculation first is preferable because the intermediate estimates might otherwise be biased by knowledge of the calculated answer.)