REAL-WORLD CONNECTIONS
Below, you will find some of the real-world connections I had students engage in when I taught Math to high school students. As a Math teacher it was always my goal to make Math relevant and meaningful to students' lives. When I designed tasks, I used situations that incorporated their experiences and interests, such as apartment rental, fishing, foods, travel, country of origin and many more. This heightened intrinsic motivation and made learning even more relevant and enduring as well as aligned to culturally responsive teaching.
During my years as a teacher in Trinidad and Tobago, students were required to explain their thoughts and make decisions and deep connections. Questions and tasks were always open -ended (we did not have multiple choice questions as part of the daily learning tasks) and students had to not only verbally explain their thoughts, but written explanations were required as well. When students took the Caribbean Council Exams, they had written exams that were graded by teachers who were paid extra for two week of grading in July. Because I wanted to experience this grading process, I applied once to grade and was selected. It was a very profound experience that gave me insight into how I should create tasks that are meaningful and attend to precision in Math. It also gave me a deeper understanding of students' ways to solve problems which I incorporated into my instructional designs and practices.
When I started teaching in the US, I knocked out all multiple choice answers and replaced them with open ended questions. Of course, my students complained to me, other teachers and their parents. They were not very happy with me initially, but they quickly adapted to this new way of representing their learning. As you can tell from the picture below, they loved being engaged in the tasks and activities. Also, when I first introduced Math Labs, they said to me Ms. Gildharry or Ms. G, Math does not have labs, labs are only done in Science classes. Well, as the picture reflects, they certainly enjoyed participating in this Big Gulp Lab below.
The very first Math lab I incorporated was the Birthday Candle Lab to collect and analyze data on the height of a burning candle. Since a burning candle was involved, we used one candle to measure the height of the candle after specific times, which I monitored. Students took turns in monitoring the heights. Everyone had their data sheet in front of them, so they were all engaged in documenting the data during this time. At the end of the class period, I sang Happy Birthday to everyone and we celebrated the end of our activity with a birthday cake.
During my years as a teacher in Trinidad and Tobago, students were required to explain their thoughts and make decisions and deep connections. Questions and tasks were always open -ended (we did not have multiple choice questions as part of the daily learning tasks) and students had to not only verbally explain their thoughts, but written explanations were required as well. When students took the Caribbean Council Exams, they had written exams that were graded by teachers who were paid extra for two week of grading in July. Because I wanted to experience this grading process, I applied once to grade and was selected. It was a very profound experience that gave me insight into how I should create tasks that are meaningful and attend to precision in Math. It also gave me a deeper understanding of students' ways to solve problems which I incorporated into my instructional designs and practices.
When I started teaching in the US, I knocked out all multiple choice answers and replaced them with open ended questions. Of course, my students complained to me, other teachers and their parents. They were not very happy with me initially, but they quickly adapted to this new way of representing their learning. As you can tell from the picture below, they loved being engaged in the tasks and activities. Also, when I first introduced Math Labs, they said to me Ms. Gildharry or Ms. G, Math does not have labs, labs are only done in Science classes. Well, as the picture reflects, they certainly enjoyed participating in this Big Gulp Lab below.
The very first Math lab I incorporated was the Birthday Candle Lab to collect and analyze data on the height of a burning candle. Since a burning candle was involved, we used one candle to measure the height of the candle after specific times, which I monitored. Students took turns in monitoring the heights. Everyone had their data sheet in front of them, so they were all engaged in documenting the data during this time. At the end of the class period, I sang Happy Birthday to everyone and we celebrated the end of our activity with a birthday cake.
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES SCHOOL AT GARINGER 2011
BIG GULP LAB and SCATTERPLOTS 2011
In this Math Lab, students engaged in a Big Gulp task in which they collected and plotted the data, determined the line of best fit, analyzed the changes of the graph if the bottle was bigger, the gulps were smaller and the bottle was taller.
I bought each group Smart water, and they were excited to drink their smart water! Now that I know we should move away from using the word smart as this does not lend to a growth mindset, if I ever have to support the implementation of this lab again, I would suggest buying "Work hard Water" :)! Students were responsible for answering questions related to the graph they plotted. I have included some of the questions in the pictures below. We also engaged in discussions to give suggestions on the effects of the graph if we changed the size of the bottle. The duration of this Big Gulp Math Lab was 2-3 days. The graph on the left,was a graph I created using students' data to compare the data and engage in discussion. This discussion was one of the first items on the agenda the following day. Here is the question and directions. What are some things you notice about the data for student A as compared to student B ? On the count of 3, turn and talk to your buddy. |
Expressions and International Foods 2009
Source : Cooking with Rita |
My students were always very curious about my country of origin and the food that we ate in Trinidad and Tobago, so I created tasks relating to the foods from my country of origin. This task led to many conversations and questions about the recipes, cost, rate between the US dollar and Trinidad and Tobago dollar and more.
I created a follow up Linear Functions task on foreign exchange rates, based on student's input as a result of our discussions above. It started off as a task and transitioned to a PBL like project when I taught ELL students in Iowa. |
POPULATION
Students were required to engage in research on the population of their country and another country of choice. I gave them a research document to complete while engaging in research, but they were required to be creative in representing information gained. After products were created, students were required to present their products and findings. In addition, I created a Blendspace Module that allowed students to reinforce concepts based on their needs before engaging in research, or even during research. Students were placed in either Math 1, Math II or Math III based on their prior education. These students were in my Math I class in which Number Sense was the first unit. I wanted to ensure that tasks were rigorous and cross-curricular. In this classroom, I had up to 5 different languages, if not more.