Thank you for this beautifully thought-out, really excellent unit plan, Adam! I am impressed by the way you have seamlessly integrated so many of the ideas we talked about in class in a clear, well timed unit.
Your unit rationale, assessment plan and sequence of lessons are sensible and thoughtful. I like the project idea(s) and all the cool Desmos teacher-designed activities you are incorporating throughout the unit. You've chosen some great, engaging projects! Your work with graphing and interpreting climate change data is important and appropriate to the unit. The Open Middle and Menu Math activities are great, and I especially like the active group problem solving questions in the appendix to lesson 1. All in all, an excellent, innovative and well-integrated unit! Well done.
Topic: Follow through figure-8 knot and possible extensions Materials for group to bring: At least 1m of rope, ideally at least 5mm in diameter, but can be thinner too Lesson Plan Reflections: I think one of my biggest takeaways from this experience is that my interpretation of my own teaching quality tends to be harsher than the views of my peers. I was not particularly pleased about making some small mistakes (mentioned in my comment) in my micro-teaching that could easily have been avoided and would likely have made the lesson go more smoothly. Then again, it seems as though everyone was still able to follow along well enough based on their feedback. I need to focus on maintaining confidence even when things don't go 100% as planned, and I need to practice more with becoming comfortable teaching online. I was mostly happy with the timing of my presentation and scope of content chosen.
The first thing that jumped out at me when reading this article was the uncanny resemblance to American politics. That is, for some reason, lay people seem to be attracted to polarized camps of thought whether it comes to government or pedagogy, and the majority vote often swings back and forth like a pendulum between these extremes. This makes it difficult for those engaged in the nuanced discussion of what constitutes ideal mathematics pedagogy to proceed without immediately being labeled as a progressivist or traditionalist. I also didn't realize that there was such a widespread call to re-develop mathematics education pre-WW2. The fact that highly intelligent and well-trained professionals and academics have been engaging in discussion about what constitutes ideal mathematics pedagogy for such a long time encourages me to do some more reading! I think there is a lot we can learn as new teachers by first looking back at this history, and also understanding how educational trends...
What I have learned This course helped introduce me to the vast body of literature about mathematics education that exists. It has been motivating to see that there is a history of reform and continual research amongst academic institutions, and that often practicing teachers are involved in this research too. I hope to continue reading as part of my ongoing professional development. I also find some of the theory very interesting! I've also learned that it's important to stop and solve a fun problem every once in a while! Having the little problems interspersed with the readings was not only educational in how we think about problems from our "teacher bird" and "student bird" perspectives, but they were also just really fun and having fun is encouraging. How my ideas have changed throughout the course I think that I have opened my mind a bit more throughout this course to the possible efficacy of less conventional methods of teaching mathematics. Although ...
(Love the cartoon!! )
ReplyDeleteThank you for this beautifully thought-out, really excellent unit plan, Adam! I am impressed by the way you have seamlessly integrated so many of the ideas we talked about in class in a clear, well timed unit.
ReplyDeleteYour unit rationale, assessment plan and sequence of lessons are sensible and thoughtful. I like the project idea(s) and all the cool Desmos teacher-designed activities you are incorporating throughout the unit. You've chosen some great, engaging projects! Your work with graphing and interpreting climate change data is important and appropriate to the unit. The Open Middle and Menu Math activities are great, and I especially like the active group problem solving questions in the appendix to lesson 1. All in all, an excellent, innovative and well-integrated unit! Well done.