December 16th: Course Reflection

    Something that I learned and took away from this course was how important it is to have a classroom that leads towards student inquiry so they'll be able to grow and flourish, not only as math students, but as students who are trying to navigate their life. It's important to incorporate different ways of teaching so students aren't stuck with a "traditional" method of teaching, especially those who don't tend to typically enjoy mathematics but enjoy other classes. It was so interesting to learn about different ideas to incorporate during the process of doing the inquiry project, I'm excited to incorporate ideas into the class like the flipped classroom, the thinking classroom, anti anxiety techniques, and many others.

    One blog post that stuck out to me was when we spoke about teacher bird vs student bird. Thinking about what I'd enjoy doing as a teacher but also reflecting on how I would do things as a student if given the question is very important. I also learned how important it is to reflect on things after doing them as a teacher bird, and how it'd be important to incorporate this into the classroom so that students are able to figure out what they do and don't understand.

    I enjoyed the layout of this classroom, but it might be interesting to learn about different styles of teaching.

December 7th: Inquiry 1 Project and Reflection

Annotated Bibliography

Flipped Classroom Presentation

Reflection:

    During Jessica and I's flipped classroom, I thought that our activity went well. We weren't sure how well it would go with such a short period of time, but a group from the flipped classroom ended up getting the highest score and seemingly enjoyed the lecture more than the "traditional" method! I think that since the activity was so short it wasn't a totally accurate representation of a flipped classroom. I wish we had a longer period of time to be able to do a math topic however we wanted to choose something that most of the students may not know about.

    I thought that it was very interesting that studies did not see a change academically in students. Another thing that stood out to me from a study showed that feeling predict final grades in males while course design predict the final grades in females. The main takeaway from the project, which I had assumed previously, was that if it was implemented correctly students enjoy the flipped classroom more! I'm very excited to attempt to implement this into my future classroom, however am worried that students will not watch the videos at home before coming into class.

October 19th Exit Slip

Today in class, Jessica and I collected articles to potentially use as resources for our inquiry project. Our inquiry project is about the Flipped Classroom and different students' perceptions on it when it is implemented.

November 16th: Inquiry Project Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography Link:

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/10g6YLX74vxZY1w9hcutvwepEAsjoIFZ4ZAdOAooc4dE/edit

October 19th Entrance Slip

Option 2:

1) What are your "student bird" and "teacher bird" thoughts about assigning percentages or letter grades in the assessment of student work? What do the grades indicate? How are they arrived at? Whose purposes do they serve? What are positive and negative aspects to giving grades? to be assigned grades by an instructor?

As a current student in the Bachelor of Education program, and as someone who just finished my Bachelor of Mathematics in April, I'm finding the jump from grading and marks being so important to a pass/fail system very relieving. I am someone who puts a lot of pressure on myself to receive good marks, but I found with percent grades I would always get frustrated and wonder why I got for example 79% instead of 80%. I'm finding that I'm able to express myself more in this program now with pass/fail since I'm not as worried about my specific grades. I'm worrying less about having the exact answer that my profs are looking for and now am doing things the way that I enjoy the best or the way that I learn the best so I'm really enjoying the switch.

As a teacher, I find assigning percentages very difficult. Similarly to from my student perspective, I would struggle to explain to a student why they got 79% and not 80%. I find that giving letter grades easier for me to justify, since I can make criteria that a student much reach for me to justify giving them the specific letter grade. 

2) What are some of the unintended side effects of grading? How do grades and marks in themselves format the social relations and learning situations in a classroom, a school, a district?

I think that an unintended side effect of grading is how we perceive students and how they perceive each other. We may have an expectation of certain students to either do good or do bad depending on what we have seen from them on previous tests and projects or from what other teachers tell us about our experiences with them. This also causes students who usually do well a higher amount of pressure to receive a certain percentage which can lead to more stress in their lives.

3) Could you imagine teaching math and/or science without giving grades? How could a teacher encourage learning without having an emphasis on grading?

I think that teaching math without giving any grades would be difficult. I especially think this is difficult for students in grades 11 and 12 who are looking to pursue academics because of the expectations of universities. Students in those cases will always be looking for a better percent grade so they're more likely to get into the school of their choice. However, I think it is possible in other cases. I think that having the proficiency scale is very good to encourage learning without the grade emphasis because it helps students see in what areas they can work on the most and what they are excelling on.

October 19th Homework - Inquiry Project

Here is my Inquiry Project:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12a1Anpy_tj9MwvLpGt_wIXwVTlegmHishNuIUmayo2M/edit?usp=sharing

October 5 Entrance Slip - Dancing Teachers Into Being With a Garden

I think that there are pros and cons to the grid as a teacher candidate. Using grids can hopefully help with organization of the classroom as well as the structure of it. Having that organization can help students to feel more like there is a direction they are being led towards which can make students more comfortable. Having the structure can hopefully make them feel like if they are struggling with a concept or question there will be support and a process of doing things. On the other hand, I am worried that having this structure can make students feel restricted or that they do not have any creative liberty when that is not the case. Students are also kept in a school all day and may start to resent the grid structure.

The picture of the gridded flax plants and then the following picture of the grids falling apart really struck me. People always attempt to make things in grids, and newer generations will be tempted to go away from this. Sticking with the same plan does not work for everyone, so there must be allowance for bending or changing if needed.

"Considering multisensory awareness creates a problematic for a binary way of working in outdoor education." I feel like this stuck to me as you never know whether students will be too overstimulated when outdoors. I do however think that just staying inside because of this worry is staying within what is 'safe' rather than testing other things.