My Unit Plan: Math 8 Surface Area + Volume

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_JvSjJRS_QQOXVuWW0ydmEzbkU/view?usp=sharing

Here is the link to my Unit Plan!

Reflection: John Mason

1) Do Mason's ideas might connect with inquiry-based learning in secondary school mathematics? (And why or why not?)

2) How might Mason's ideas about questions in math class be incorporated into your unit planning for your long practicum?

1 )

Mason's ideas definitely align with inquiry learning in secondary math. Inquiry allows teachers to not only be able to question their students but also allow their students to question them in a thought-provoking way. Mason's definition of a teacher who exemplifies good questioning is very similar to an inquiry-based teacher, who focuses on question-based learning. These teachers are able to create students who can ask thoughtful questions and be able to answer thoughtful questions by thinking critically.

2 )

A teacher is able to outline questions for his or her students in order to be able to incorporate questioning into their lessons. They may be able to note down possible questions they think their students may benefit from them asking. They can also note down possible questions their students may have, and outline paths they can create in order to allow them to get there. Following the path of John Mason, this would be an amazing addition to a unit plan.

Reflection: Dave Hewitt

In his classroom, Dave Hewitt made it imperative to his students to have a proper wait time. He did many lessons with his students and asked questions, but always gave an appropriate wait time, in a way that kept his students engaged in the lesson. He also found it very important to repeat his key points in order to ensure his students were understanding and absorbing every word he was saying. He made his lessons more so a conversation than a lecture, by incorporating the ideas of every student rather than simply transmitting knowledge. This way students had a memory of what they had learned rather than just notes on a paper. Finally, the most important part of Hewitt's lessons were when he would encourage his class to say the answer to his questions in unison. It allowed students to gauge their understanding while getting help from their peers along the way.
Of all of Dave Hewitt's classroom techniques, I definitely find the technique of his class saying answers in unison to be the most useful. While I can see how they would all be useful in their own ways, this is the one I would use the most. It is a clear way of seeing if the students understand, and a later reaction time, or no response from students can show that a student may not exactly understand the concept. I really enjoyed this video and hope to see more from Dave Hewitt in the future.

Micro-Teaching: Reflection

For my group's micro-teaching, we did a lesson on Graphing Relations from Math 10. We altogether felt the lesson went well but could have been better. Our point was to incorporate some sort of inquiry and technology into the lesson in order to keep our students engaged and still have them learn something. While I feel that we did succeed in getting our topic through to the class, one thing that we definitely could have worked on was the Kahoot quiz. It was evident that without the proper labelling of the axes, students were left unsure of what the answer to each question was for sure. The intention was to allow them room to decide what they thought in terms of the axes, but in reality all we did was confuse them. In the future, I will definitely do my best to make sure something like this does not happen again.

Micro-Teaching: Peer-Evaluations