What wakes you up in the morning? What keeps you going back to work day after day, year after year to a career that is exhausting emotionally, mentally and physically? How do you do it?
The answer is simple. We love the kids. We love learning. We love making the concepts in our courses come alive for students. We want to make a difference.
How do you bring concepts alive for students?
When you find yourself going through a daily routine void of challenge for both you and your students, it is likely that you'll begin to wonder if the outcomes you are seeing in your students are worth the effort you are expending. Does what you are doing actually make a difference in these students in the long run? If we are honest, we will discover that many of our lessons and activities are not that exciting for anyone. Will they remember what they are doing? Will they be able to apply the skills we are practicing in subsequent units of instruction, in subsequent math courses or in other subjects (such as science)?
One way you can increase student engagement is to introduce quality problem solving that is real and rigorous. When students are examining data from their own life and community, they are much more interested in understanding and remembering what they are learning. Here is where your passion comes into play. What issues in your school or community interest you? What pressing needs exist in your school or in your state? How could you use those issues to bring in real data that will not only make sense to students, but will put purpose behind the analysis you are doing. Without giving students the narrative behind the data, allow them to discover for themselves how the real world works. Give students a voice to present their ideas to their classmates and to those beyond the walls your classroom.
This is real life. This is real math.
What about the Rest of the curriculum?
There will still be units of instruction that do not lend themselves well to rich data analysis or problem solving. But if you have given your students opportunities to wrestle with the bigger problems, perhaps they will allow for a little skill development in preparation for a future 'real life' problem. Or better, maybe students will begin discovering or creating problems that can be solved with the new skills they are learning.
Making inquiry part of your routine will go a long way in making math class more interesting and more relevant. As you find problems to solve that are meaningful for students, share those with the rest of us on social media!
If you are not already following me on twitter, I invite you to follow me and my #PLN
If you want to toss around a few ideas for creating authentic problem solving with and for your students, I would love to help.
No comments:
Post a Comment