Here are a few posts that have jumped out at my from my Reader:
1. Jackie (via her delicious account) saved a link to a collection of AMC questions. These will be great as problems of the week! (I haven't decided what I'm going to do with those this year... but that's a whole other post.)
2. This is a post from Dave Marain at MathNotations talking about his upcoming contest. I'd registered to do it last year but didn't get a chance to give it to my kids... there was just too going on with kids in and out on field trips. I'd like to give it another chance this fall!
3. Jeff Trevaskis at Webmaths just wrote a post about lesson planning and the difference between US/German teachers and Japanese teachers. I've seen/read before that the Japanese teachers teach by giving thought-provoking problems, let the kids work on them, then have some students present their answers to the class. I have questions about this - does it happen every day? Where do the kids get the background knowledge that they'd need to solve the problems? My student teacher this past semester started out wanting to do this every day. By the end, though, he saw that it wouldn't work with these students - they don't care enough. Trying this with sophomores/juniors in high school is just too late.
2 comments:
If there were tons of time this would be the best way to teach math. Unfortunately, there never seems to be enough time to give students time to inquire and figure things out on their own. If we had a 60 or 90 minute block of math time each day, this inquiry approach is what I would add. Andrea
Andrea, I agree with the time issue. We only have a limited amount of time and too much to cover. I think a lot of it has to do with the kids wanting to know, too... if they grew up with a more inquiry-based class they might be more into it. Now all of my classes just basically say "tell me how to do it so I can do my homework."
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