Monthly Archives: March 2012

Always, Sometimes, Never

Posted on by
Reply

I used this Thoughtful Education strategy today with my Algebra I student.  I’ve attached the worksheet I used (ASN Graphing Equations and Inequalities).  I used this strategy as a refresher, since my student is going into the next chapter, and can always benefit from connecting topic areas.  I knew that she was absent a lot during the lessons on graphing inequalities, so I made up this worksheet for her to complete.  When I made up the statements to put on the page, I thought of all of the important things that she will need to remember from the previous chapter to take with her into the current chapter.  Her evaluation of these statements gave me a better idea of what she still needed to revisit.

First of all, she said something that told me she didn’t know what an inequality was.  Because I was having a discussion with her, instead of just giving her busy work, I was able to pick up on this and correct it right away.  Once she knew what an inequality was (a statement using < or > or “less than or equal to” or “greater than or equal to”), she was able to work through the statements on her own, and then we reviewed them together.  During our discussion, it was clear she was solid on many of the aspects of graphing, but when it came to the shading statement, I realized she didn’t know how to actually graph an inequality, and that we needed more time to practice and review that.

I will definitely use this tool again, both as a pre-teaching tool and a reviewing tool.  Both will help me to know what they have learned correctly, and what we still need to focus on.  In a larger group setting, this will be helpful to know who really understands a certain topic, and who is skating through.

Active Learners for the Future

Posted on by
Reply

I am a firm believer that students need to be actively engaged to learn.  The best teachers, and by far the most memorable lessons, incorporate active involvement in the classroom.  My favorite math teacher in high school taught us about locus points by taking us outside and rearranging us as locus points, situating us around stationary objects such as trees and sidewalks.  My second favorite math teacher taught us pre-calculus by encouraging us to explore various graphs to come up with rules for graphing them, and provided limited guidance in this process.  It was maddening, but I better learned how various types of graphs match up with their equations.

Nay-sayers to this method of teaching claim that teachers are being lazy, making the students do all the work.  I believe it’s quite the contrary.  Teachers have to take a lot of time and effort to plan a lesson that students will run themselves.  Teachers have to anticipate every direction that the lesson may go in.  Teachers have to remain astute to the conversations and actions around the classroom as an active lesson is being implemented, to make sure the students are staying focused to the task at hand.  People that oppose this method may also claim that with time constraints, material needs to be covered before state tests, and that active learning takes more time to implement.  While that may be true, wouldn’t it be better to have students learn the content better than try to race through content only touching on brief aspects?  Wouldn’t you get more out of your students with active learning because students would want to come to class and to stay attentive while there?

The alternative to active learning creates passive learners.  These are the types of learners that sit in class soaking up knowledge, just to squeeze it back onto an assessment and maybe, if they are lucky, to retain it.  These are the learners that never truly learn how to learn, or to do anything independently.  When they leave high school, they are lost in a sea of other passive learners, and do not know how to actively solve problems, or even how to find problems to solve.  When we create passive learners, we are setting them up for failure.

I believe that it is active learning that inspires students to continue learning.  I believe that it is active learning that causes students to continue to ask questions, and creates a spark for their passion of wanting to know more.  Active learners possess intrinsic motivation, the highest and most effective means of motivation, and the hardest for a teacher to cultivate.  However, once an active learner has been created, they are unstoppable, always looking for the answers to life’s questions, and always coming up with new questions to ask.  Why would we not want to have active learners in our society, in our future, and more importantly, in our classrooms?