Let’s Go Exploring!

When I first joined Cohort21, we were asked to think of a slogan that we could put on a t-shirt that represented us. So ‘let’s go exploring’ was mine. I have to confess, it was initially about travelling, something I love to do, but I quickly realised that this slogan also represent something that I love to do in teaching – explore! Explore new ideas to teaching mathematics – explore new technology for the classroom – explore new ways to assess; just explore!

Thus, I decided that in my first blog post ever, I would share some of the things that I learned as a result of me exploring.

• For the life of me, I cannot quite remember what article I read or perhaps a blog post, but it was about assessments, and how if we want students to really learn from assessments then we need to do something to make the students look beyond the mark. This led me to grading the first test for my Grade 11 math students with words such as ‘good job’, ‘well done’ etc. and other words such as ‘double check’, or a line drawn to differentiate from the correct working to the incorrect working or questions to help them think about their response. Students would not get their grade until they reflected on where they went wrong and why. I will confess some of the reflection pieces were somewhat brief, but it was the first time they had done something like this and it takes a while to not value the mark over the reflection, but I am hopeful especially when one student did say ‘that this was nicest test she had even gotten back’.As a side note, please read Beth Nichols‘ blog on reflective assessments that she is doing with Grade 9s as it gives more food for the thought about this idea.

 

• My next ‘let’s try something different’ was the result of a tweet from Alice Keeler about finding math concepts outside the classroom. So that is exactly what I did with my Grade 8 students as we spent a lovely 60 minutes in the glorious autumn sunshine finding all sorts of examples for lines.

The idea was for students to see that what they were learning was actually all around them. The next step is to see the purposeful application of these findings!

 

 

• The last tool that I used recently is one that I heard about, I want to say about two years ago from my colleague Ruth Eichholtz, also a Cohort21 alumni, and it is Dan Meyer’s Three Acts. I remember when Ruth spoke of this concept of showing a video, about two minutes long and having students come up with questions to ask about the video in the hope that the question you truly want to be explored will arise from the students not the teacher, it seemed somewhat daunting – what if the questions given have nothing to do with the lesson you want to teach??

           
Well simply, you have to have a little faith and know that somewhere among all the questions will be be pieces of what you want to have the students learn that you may need to tie together – in other words, it will work.So why did I want to try this? The main reason was that I wanted the students to be vested in what they are learning, have some control in how the lesson was going to go. If they did, then perhaps they will be interested in the final result.

I will say that my first attempt was a hit and a miss at the same time. I did get the question I was hoping for, but it was after several questions along the lines of ‘what is the point of this video?’ A legitimate question and one I hope the students did get in the end. If not, well then ‘Take Two’!

There you go – a taste of my exploration in teaching for 2016-2017 thus far.

I am looking forward to this continued journey of exploration with fellow members of Cohort21 as I determine what might be my big project may be. At the moment, I am thinking that I would like for it to centre around how I might be able to do observations and conversations effectively in my classroom…. Stay tuned!