Week 3 is winding down and I can see the connections with Civco and a math classroom. When timing the various processes, we are measuring to the nearest hundredth of a second. This connects with the Standard for Mathematical Practice: Attend to Precision. Students must learn to calculate accurately and efficiently. The workers in the clean room must measure lengths of material to 58 + 2 inches or even 10 + .25 inches. Because of that, they need to understand what falls in those ranges. This is the Standard for Mathematical Practice: Reason Abstractly and Quantitatively. The workers must make sense of quantities and their relationships. While using Excel, I am calculating the mean and standard deviation of that data. While Excel does perform these calculations for me, I need to understand what they mean and what that means to our data.
Other major areas of connection I see have nothing to do with math, but important life skills: independent work and time management (21st Century Skills). While working at Civco, I have been given a task and then basically left alone to do my task. No one is sitting next to me, prodding me to keep going, guiding what I do. I had to figure out the best route to take in working on the spreadsheets, organize my plan, and then execute it. As a big list maker, that is right where I started- I made a list. What did I need to do? Did I need to do things before I could do other things? This totally helped me feel better about my project and not so overwhelmed. Then I thought- would my students do that? Would they even know where to start? Too many times (ok, almost all the time) I am dictating to students how to spend their classtime:
Ok students, let's read p. 12-13 together...
Follow along with me as I work through this example...
You have 10 minutes to work on your homework, I'll be available for questions...
What if instead of telling students exactly how to spend their classtime, they took some ownership in that? What if I gave them a topic and they had to figure out how to best learn it? I of course would be there to help, if needed, but there would be a lot of power in choosing how they were going to learn something. I believe this addresses a few of the Characteristics of Effective Instruction (Teaching for Understanding, Teaching for Learner Differences, and Student Centered Classrooms).
A final area of connection comes from the entire experience itself. I have moved out of the classroom into a whole different world. What a great experience to share with my students! I want my students to challenge themselves and try new things- what better for me to do, than lead by example. I can not wait to share with my students the nerves of starting something new and then the satisfaction of solving a problem and finishing a project. I will also have more examples to add to my mental database for when students ask the inevitable question, "When will we ever use this?"
Other major areas of connection I see have nothing to do with math, but important life skills: independent work and time management (21st Century Skills). While working at Civco, I have been given a task and then basically left alone to do my task. No one is sitting next to me, prodding me to keep going, guiding what I do. I had to figure out the best route to take in working on the spreadsheets, organize my plan, and then execute it. As a big list maker, that is right where I started- I made a list. What did I need to do? Did I need to do things before I could do other things? This totally helped me feel better about my project and not so overwhelmed. Then I thought- would my students do that? Would they even know where to start? Too many times (ok, almost all the time) I am dictating to students how to spend their classtime:
Ok students, let's read p. 12-13 together...
Follow along with me as I work through this example...
You have 10 minutes to work on your homework, I'll be available for questions...
What if instead of telling students exactly how to spend their classtime, they took some ownership in that? What if I gave them a topic and they had to figure out how to best learn it? I of course would be there to help, if needed, but there would be a lot of power in choosing how they were going to learn something. I believe this addresses a few of the Characteristics of Effective Instruction (Teaching for Understanding, Teaching for Learner Differences, and Student Centered Classrooms).
A final area of connection comes from the entire experience itself. I have moved out of the classroom into a whole different world. What a great experience to share with my students! I want my students to challenge themselves and try new things- what better for me to do, than lead by example. I can not wait to share with my students the nerves of starting something new and then the satisfaction of solving a problem and finishing a project. I will also have more examples to add to my mental database for when students ask the inevitable question, "When will we ever use this?"
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