Ms. T's Piece on the Positive Process
Laster, K.,
Laster, K., & profile, V. (2018). Math Is...2014 Version. Retrieved from http://mathmagicwithlaster.blogspot.com/2014/09/math-is-2014-version.html
Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog!
In today’s class we focused on the
importance of positive growth mindset in math. This topic really stood out for
me as I started to reflect on my previous math experiences. Growing up, my math
teachers didn’t integrate a positive growth mindset into their everyday lessons.
From my high school math experience, I didn’t think about the other students
around me and how they learned math differently than I did as I was extremely
focused on the way I wanted to do the problem and my way of solving it was
right. However, now as a future educator that mindset has completely changed.
The TED talk watched in class today
gave me inspiration on different ways to incorporate different teaching
strategies to not only benefit myself as a teacher but also my students (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3icoSeGqQtY&vl=en).
Boalers (2016) has six useful planning tips to incorporate positive growth
mindset when designing your daily lessons. The following six questions are:
1.
Can you open the task to encourage
multiple methods, pathways, and representations?
2.
Can you make it an inquiry task?
3.
Can you ask the problem before
teaching the method?
4.
Can you add a visual component?
5.
Can you make it low floor and high
ceiling?
6.
Can you add the requirement to
convince and reason?
I believe that asking yourself
these questions when designing your lesson will incorporate all learning types
in your classroom. By using these questions it will allow the teacher to
develop a greater understanding of how their students learn, such as getting a grasp
on who is a visual learner and what the students’ strengths and weaknesses are.
By developing a better understanding of your students learning styles, it can
help place similar students together in group work, or by making a group where
you mix learning styles so students can learn from one another. In class today
we were presented with a problem: “How do you see the shapes growing?” I found
this to be an extremely interesting activity as I got a sense of how my
classmates think and I got to learn multiple new ways to look at this problem.
I also thought of how the use of metaphors can help students connect to a math
problem as they can relate to it, instead of posing an algebraic expression
right away where students don’t understand how the formula was created. This
activity sparked ideas in ways I can incorporate new methods of teaching math
in the future by straying away from independent learning and traditional
teaching styles to transitioning to collaboration, creative thinking and inquiry
based activities. This transition will allow students to develop metacognition
and increase their problem solving skills, instead of memorization and a lack
of understanding the big ideas of the lesson. I can now use the book “Mathematical mindsets: unleashing students'
potential through creative math, inspiring messages, and innovative teaching”
by
Boaler (2016) as a resource in future practice to gain more knowledge on
integrating a positive math mindset in my classroom.
Jo Boaler, 2018. How you can be good at math, and other surprising facts about
learning. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3icoSeGqQtY&vl=en
Additionally, the
second activity we did in class today had an impact on me. We went around the
classroom and had to shake everyone’s hand. I really liked the approach to this
activity as it was an excellent transition into a hands-on learning experience.
After shaking everyone’s hand, the teacher asked us a simple question, “How
many handshakes did we make?” and handed us whiteboard markers and off we went.
Some of the classmates results were are shown in the images below. It was
extremely useful to physically go around the classroom and shake hands compared
to saying “There are 15 people in a room, how many total handshakes would there
be?” This allowed us to be connected to the problem and figure out multiple
ways of finding the answer. This activity also allowed us to share our strategies
of finding the total number of handshakes with our peers. It is also
interesting to note the similarities and differences of the photos below. The
first photo shows a visual representation of using stick people to solve the
problem which was one of the strategies my partner and I used. In comparison,
the other pair grouped numbers together. Regardless of the strategy used, both
ways arrived to the same answer of 105 handshakes. However, both pairs used the
combination formula taught in grade 12 data management to attain the same answer
in a more complex manner. The challenge I came across doing this activity is
coming to the realization of how unfamiliar I was with the grade 9-12 Ontario
mathematics curriculum. I couldn’t remember what grade learned what function or
if any of the methods used reflected a specific expectation in the curriculum. Therefore,
I need to focus on developing a better understanding of what is taught in each
strand and grade level.
Overall from today’s
class I have gained a better understanding of ways to transition from a fixed
mindset to a growth mindset. As a future math and science educator I believe
students are typically afraid and have negative connotations of these subjects
in an academic context. Therefore, continually reinforcing a positive growth
mindset in the classroom is a priority for me, as it will help transform a
negative learning environment into a positive learning community.
Remember,
Anderson, J.,
2017. Getting “Praise
Mistakes” right! Retrieved from https://mindfulbydesign.com/need-stop-praising-mistakes/
References
Boaler, J.
(2016). Mathematical mindsets:
unleashing students' potential through creative math, inspiring messages, and
innovative teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass & Pfeiffer
Imprints, [2016]
Hi Nicole!
ReplyDeleteReading your blog, I feel like I can relate to a lot of your experiences on a personal level.
I was always used to having a fixed mindset. I was only concerned with how I could solve a math problem, and that my answer was the most correct way to approaching such a problem. However, I realized that through tutoring, I have dealt with students with many different learning styles and strategies. As a tutor, it challenged me to work through the same problem in various ways that would ultimately benefit the student I was teaching. As a lifelong learner, this made me become more flexible in how to approach certain math problems in my own courses. To reinforce a better growth mindset, you do not necessarily have to tutor, but definitely working in collaborative groups can help you explore different solutions to similar problems. As a teacher candidate, this should be particularly beneficial when working with you own classrooms for future practice.
I also really like your idea about using practical metaphors to tackle abstract algebraic problems. I never thought about that during the video, so I'm glad to see that you thought of this idea! This made me think about all of the possible opportunities I can utilize practical references into the high school curriculum. For example, the question in the TED talk could be related to the Discrete Functions strand in the Ontario curriculum for Grade 11 University Preparation math. This shows that even in a university preparation classroom, I can use tools such as metaphors to reach every student in my classroom. What other practical tools could we use to ensure that all of our students are learning in our math classrooms?
Regards,
Jarrett
Hey Jarrett!
ReplyDeleteThank you for taking the time to read my blog post. I am glad that you can relate to my reflection! I do agree with that working in groups will help everyone explore the way that they learn best and develop a better understanding of how others work as well. I noticed when I was in school I would work with people who worked in a similar manner, however, reaching out to work with someone new can be beneficial as it can allow for more learning to take place. A resource that we can use in our future classrooms can be a website called www.thirteen.org/get-the-math which is a “get the math” website that includes challenges that relate to real life scenarios such as “math in music, math in fashion and math in videogames.” Therefore, this will allow students who aren’t that interested in math to use these types of resources to gain a better understanding of connecting to the math problem. This is a way to ensure that the students are staying in engaged.
Hi Nicole, really enjoyed reading your post! Thanks for sharing! I think generating positive mindsets is especially important in the math classroom. One thing that your post got me thinking about was how to maintain a positive growth mindset even when students are really struggling in the class. For example, one situation this may occur is after a unit test where a large portion of the class has just done poorly. I think that it is critical to try to re-energize the classroom after a situation like this. I think that being able to promote a positive mindset in the classroom always begins with having a positive mindset as a teacher. It may be easy to feel like our teaching practice has failed when our students are not successful, but the reality is that this will happen from time to time. As teachers, we need to accept the fact that mathematics is a very difficult subject for many high school students. As teachers, creating relatability through sharing your own person anecdotes about struggling and encouraging students to put more work in and strive to improve are key skills to maintaining that growth mindset. When our classroom is struggling, the million dollar question is how to find the energy that will mobilize the classroom back towards success! Thanks again Nicole
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