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.

September 28 Exit Slip - The Formatting Power of Math

     Today in class, we spoke about two different topics. The first was in helping raise new generations of young people how do we: 

- help them do well for themselves and do good in the world

- how to support students and ourselves with the anxieties of our times?

- how to avoid chasing the "hot issue of the day"?

I had brought up that the issues in our world today are so global, and there are so many that it can really stress students out. They are constantly receiving information through their technology and social medias that it can be very overwhelming as a new teenager learning to become their own person. The amount of opinions online can sway them very easily. I suggested bringing students to a more local place to help ground them. Lisa mentioned that in the reading, there was the class of students that as part of their homework was to use a local issue that had happened, do research on it, and give ideas to help. This can help students feel as though they are important and that they can make a difference as long as they are doing small things to help their community. 

    The second topic that we spoke on was the "formatting power" of math, physics, stories, and implicit stories and assumptions. Some ideas that Lisa, Christine, and I brought up included recreational math, creating more choices in problems, the assumption of having to memorize things in math, exactness, and that math is universal. Adding recreational math can help students find the fun in math instead of it feeling like a chore. This can include sudoku, and other problems of the sort. Making math problems that are a choose your own story format can make students feel like they have a choice in math instead of there being only one correct way of solving problems, and can lead them to learning how to apply new ideas. 

September 28 Entrance Slip - Climate Crisis

     I believe that as educators, we must set our students up for success in the real world. I think that preparing students for academia will not set them up correctly. We must show them examples that will be more applicable to their lives so that in the future they can look back at our lessons and use them if needed. 

    I think that we as people are able to change the way our subjects were traditionally were taught to us. Teaching math in the usual way of lecturing students and assessing them with tests is not very beneficial for most students. Finding more integrated ways of teaching students is important to reach everyone's learning styles in the classroom. This might include different assessment methods like formative assessments, exit slips, and different project types, or teaching a flipped classroom. If we don't change the way we teach subjects then students will continue to struggle unless they learn by reading textbooks or listening to lectures.

    I find that climate change is a very pressing issue in today's society. It feels like people do not speak about it enough and that we are not doing enough to help prevent it from worsening.

September 21 Exit Slip - Craft Reflection

Bringing your students outside is important to help build their connections with one another. This helps students to ask one another when they need clarification outside of class and do not want to email their teacher. Having a closer knit classroom helps to build joint excitement for learning about new subjects and potentially applying what they are learning in the classroom even further. An example of this happened in class last Thursday. The physics students in class made a kite with the material we were learning with in class and applied it to the subject!

I found that doing the braids and knots in class showed such interesting patterns. I feel as though students in the lower high school grades would find this exciting to visualize the patterns they are learning about. This will help visual and physical learners in the classroom to extend math to their learning styles. Math normally does not extend that often to those learning styles so it is important to make them feel included as well.

September 21 Entrance Slip - Sharon Kallis

Stops in Kallis' book:

I found it interesting to think about how newer cities are made for consumption of humans. Having cities  that are also made more for production would help to slow people down. Having people tied to transportation to get around leads to students more worried about time. Having the opportunity to bring students outside and notice things in their surroundings that may be correlated to math is beneficial for their learning process. I also thought the portion on "must find ways to see change from the perspective of what we are gaining (strengthened community resources), not what is being lost (ease of globalized consumerism)."  was so interesting because I didn't think about correlating the two together. 

Reflection on videos:

I found that the videos made me think about all the different materials you can use to make geometrical shapes in the classroom. I think it would be useful to implement with younger grades in the class. Having students moving around in the classroom helps them stay focused since normally they must sit down all day long. Allowing them to visually see what is happening infront of them by making it themselves can also help different learning styles to understand the topics.

September 14th - Exit Slip

 

The first thing in this article that made me stop was the CLN network will include an initial data base of hundreds of lesson ideas for teaching and learning across curricular areas with a garden as co-teacher, and will provide a space for communication among garden-based educators. This intrigued me and encouraged me to take a look at the network so I can use lesson ideas from it in the future for outdoor learning. Another thing that made me stop was that disciplines and faculties, including UBC’s Faculties of Education, Land & Food Systems, Forestry, Landscape Architecture, Engineering, Medicine, Arts and Sciences were all included in the CLN. This made me think of how I can connect math to these other faculties to make students more interested if they do not normally enjoy math. This can also show students that they will use certain math concepts in everyday life by using these connections.

 

I really enjoyed finding where the sun will rise and set depending what time of year it is. I think it would be very fun to incorporate this into a lower grade class.I also plan on measuring shadows and angles in a garden outside. I think that this would be good to apply to Math 9 and 10 when students begin to learn about angles and triangles. Taking this application outside would help them see that math is not useless, and that they are able to use it in real life.

 

I believe it would be difficult to maintain the attention of some students. I feel as though a lot of students get distracted outdoors so I need to make sure that I'm giving them a task they'll find interesting and that they are separated in their own spaces. I feel like doing this outside will make math more interesting for many students. It will make them realize there are many real life applications of math.