Group Noteworthy Ideas about Math and Rich Activities

5-21-14

             There were pdf articles that we had to read. The first pdf was called rich activities. This pdf starts off and explains what to consider when looking at whether an activity is rich or not. The first aspect to consider is students age. The second aspect is the student's gender. The third aspect is what the student's expectation of the class is. The last two aspects that are worth considering is the knowledge and experiences that the student might have.This pdf goes on to explain that the student's cognitive demand must be at a higher level. There are four different areas. According to the pdf, they are memorization, procedures without connections to concepts or meaning, procedures with connections to concepts or meaning, and doing math. According to the pdf, we need to be making sure as mathematics teachers that we are not just having kids memorize mathematical facts. This is because, when we, as math teachers, do that are not allowing our students to expand their knowledge and see the whole picture of just what the mathematical concept is or how we got from one point to the next. Another aspect of this pdf is taking into consideration that we really need to look at the problems we give to our students. This is because "looks can be deceiving" so to speak meaning that it might look like a higher level problem, but when you actually break it down and look at it, the problem is really not a higher level problem. This pdf also gives great questions to think about when planning lessons. Some of the questions include in what ways does it build on prior knowledge, previous life experiences, and culture?, what are all the ways the problem can be solved?, what particular challenges might the particular activity present to struggling students and ELL students?, etc.I will certainly keep all of these in mind when I start planning math lessons for my classroom. This also really puts into perspective just how much thinking and reflecting goes into planning a lesson or making sure an activity is rich enough.

         The second pdf that I looked at was group noteworthy ideas. This gives different math habits to keep in mind. They are explore ideas, orient/organizing, think in reverse, generalizing, representing, justifying, math language, and check for reasonableness. Each one had a small explanation by them. Also, as you look at each of these ideas, you notice how important each one is to the whole big picture on how students understand mathematics. Without any one of these ideas going through their heads, especially if they are working on a collaborative assignment, they will have difficulty, whether it be great or small, in completing the assignment or task. This is also true, in my opinion, when it comes to planning as a teacher. You need to make sure that you keep all of these ideas in mind, especially when making groups, to help make sure that all of your students can have success in doing the assignment.