Assessment: Interviews Journal Article

The article, "Using Student Interviews to Guide Classroom Instruction: An Action Research Project" outlines a very unique "action research project". In an action research project, as opposed to traditional research projects, a designated school research staff partakes in various types of research in an effort to change and improve varying aspects of the school and the daily school lives of the students. The overall goal of an action research project is to initiate and guide further change in the structure of the school.

In this particular situation, many teachers from Jefferson Elementary School ranging from kindergarten to fourth grade had noticed that they were struggling in teaching problem solving in the classroom. They found that this concept was not only hard for them to teach, but even harder for the students to learn. The staff realized that the number one hurdle was lack of knowledge as to the individual learning styles and practices of certain students. Therefore, they chose to investigate the following two questions...
"Do student interviews provide teachers with a more detailed, accurate, and complete picture of children's mathematical understanding?"
and
" Does this knowledge help teachers improve the way that they teach mathematics?"

The action research plan unfolded as follows, team members conducted interviews with individual students while the rest of the class partook in extension activities. Two sets of interviews were conducted, one in the fall and one in the spring. The team members then shared the results of their interviews with the rest of the team and the staff and described the possible impact of using the results of these interviews to guide classroom instruction.

TCM March Article - Sand and Water Table Play

This article discusses a study in which the authors observed pre-school children at play. These particular children were engaged at the classrooms sand and water play table, and the authors wanted to determine if mathematics could be found in their simply daily play routines. The authors goal was to understand how these particular children would interact with the provided materials and what basic math ideas and concepts would be evident even in their early play. The authors end the article by providing and discussing how this type of play can provide and encourage current and future mathematical learning and exploration.

I found the subject of this article very interesting, because of the concept of these children starting their mathematical explorations at such a young age. The idea is so simple yet seems to be so commonly overlooked, that the exploration of basic math concepts starts in simply play at a young age. If these students can be provided with even more opportunities to begin exploring math through fun play activities at the pre-school age, then there is no telling how far we as educators can take the positive promotion of math in future students.

MTMS March Article - Poematics

In this creative recount of a unique concept in the area of teaching mathematics, Abraham Ayebo and Lynda Weist describe a classroom in which students are encouraged to connect mathematics with other areas of academic exploration. In this particular example, students are taught via a lesson that integrates poetry and mathematics allowing students to connect their mathematics knowledge with their writing skills and create mathematical poems, or poems describing mathematical concepts and situations/poems with mathematical origin. Essentially, students were asked to describe the mathematical concepts and situations that they were learning through the context of a poem, while being encouraged to use informal, creative and expressive language.

I found this concept and article to be very intriguing. This is a perfect example of a teacher who is at the forefront of the movement to take mathematics outside of the traditional plug and chug memorization context, and allow students to make connections to other academic and real life situations. This allows the students to see how mathematics can apply to a variety of situations and subjects that they will experience every day, and allows them to better connect to the subject in a fun way.

Video Reflection - Grade 7 Graphs

In this grade seven on graphs, and the sequence of patterns found in tables, the teacher poses an interesting challenge to the students. She explains that she has created a number of different graphs representing different quantities and functions. She allows the students to break themselves off into their own groups and then provides them all with a transparency of a graph. The task is for the students to create a story to go along with what is represented in the graph. She gives a few examples such as the relationship between time and temperature, however, she leaves the final decision of what their story will revolve around up to them. She goes in, especially in her own reflection or explanation of the lesson, to explain that she then wants the students to show the pattern of the graph in a table form, and come up with an equation for finding unknown values based off of the known ones represented in the table.

1. Describe how appropriate you think the primary task in this lesson is for developing an understanding of the mathematics being taught.

I personally believe that this task in particular is very appropriate for the lesson that the teacher is providing. By allowing the students to group up and come up with individual stories she is allowing them to connect to the content that she has provided. By doing this she is helping to ensure that the students will possibly take more of a personal interest in the graphs that they are studying because of the fact that are connecting to it on a personal level. By then taking the stories that they have created and further tying them into another math concept closely related to graphs, in this case, tables and the idea of creating an equation to find further numbers in the sequence, she is further ensuring that the students will take these prior connections that they have made and apply them to related topics and hopefully build off of the knowledge that they have gained to build their overall math skills.

2. Propose one or more alternative tasks that might have strengthened the lesson or helped to clarify the key mathematical ideas being developed, and justify the use of this task or these tasks.

I am not entirely sure how well this would have worked, but it may have benefited the students to come up with alternative stories for work with the tables after they were done with their graphs. The only issue I see arising with the original task is that if the students original stories were designed solely for the relationship represented in the graphs and did not lend themselves well to the idea of creating tables and predicting future variables, then the students may struggle with connecting personally to this concept. By allowing students the choice of creating a new story to go with their tables then the teacher may have further ensured that the students would be able to do this.

3. What criteria do you use to determine whether or not to use a particular task with your class?

While I obviously do not have a class of my own at the current time, I can think of what I may do with my future class. I do not have a specific list of criteria, however, I can say that if I did, the number one thing would be the students ability to connect to the topic. I am a firm believer that if the students cannot find some way to connect to a lesson personally, even on the smallest of levels, then they will not be truly engaged in what they are learning. If this is the case, then the learning will simply become a process that they go through and many despise. If students despise the processes of learning math then how can we expect to encourage their further explorations? Outside of this, I would ensure that the lesson allows students room to build on further concepts, this is represented well in this lesson when the teacher has them move from graphs to tables.