September 5th - Exit Slip
Our discussion yesterday about the six controversial statements about math education illuminated my feelings and attitudes towards math education and myself as a math educator. What I found especially remarkable was how opinionated I was and where I stood on each issue. Specifically, I felt intrigued by questions 2 and 5.
My interest in question 2 arose as a result of my discussion with my groupmates. I personally feel that it is worth it to spend extraneous time on one problem for the value it could bring to student. For starters, if a student is struggling with a problem and asks for elaboration, that could imply that other students in the classroom are struggling with the problem also. A reflective teacher would, in my opinion, be mindful of this with their lesson planning and would have accounted for extra time or be responsive to consider it for the next time they present the lesson.
Additionally, I see that there is great value in framing an entire lesson plan around 1 question. An example I proposed is teaching the roots/zeros of a polynomial to grade 11 students. One could frame a lesson around teaching the three traditional ways of finding roots (graphing, factoring, quadratic formula) around 1 question so that students become familiar the strengths and weaknesses of each method while being mindful of what the correct answer is supposed to be.
Finally, I have always been passionate about Math history and believe that it can be encorporated into the curriculum. For example, when teaching Calculus, one can share its history to allow students to gain intuition on how ideas came about. This is because the invention of Calculus was very intuitive and was mostly in the same linear fashion as how we study it today in schools. By providing the historical intuition I believe students will gain better insight to the mathematical ideas around the subject matter.
My interest in question 2 arose as a result of my discussion with my groupmates. I personally feel that it is worth it to spend extraneous time on one problem for the value it could bring to student. For starters, if a student is struggling with a problem and asks for elaboration, that could imply that other students in the classroom are struggling with the problem also. A reflective teacher would, in my opinion, be mindful of this with their lesson planning and would have accounted for extra time or be responsive to consider it for the next time they present the lesson.
Additionally, I see that there is great value in framing an entire lesson plan around 1 question. An example I proposed is teaching the roots/zeros of a polynomial to grade 11 students. One could frame a lesson around teaching the three traditional ways of finding roots (graphing, factoring, quadratic formula) around 1 question so that students become familiar the strengths and weaknesses of each method while being mindful of what the correct answer is supposed to be.
Finally, I have always been passionate about Math history and believe that it can be encorporated into the curriculum. For example, when teaching Calculus, one can share its history to allow students to gain intuition on how ideas came about. This is because the invention of Calculus was very intuitive and was mostly in the same linear fashion as how we study it today in schools. By providing the historical intuition I believe students will gain better insight to the mathematical ideas around the subject matter.
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