3D Printer and more Technology in the Classroom (plus the last Step II lesson of the semester)

 The week before Thanksgiving was pretty busy as it usually does as the semester draws to a close with all of its final presentations and final exams. I think that the first thing I want to talk about this week is my final lesson for Step II since I will be writing 5E lesson plans to close out the semester. Unlike the two previous lessons, my time management was poor. I made the strategic decision in the middle of the lesson to forego the evaluation I had prepared since our statistical examination that closes Step II will look at one evaluation in particular. The lesson was productive for my own growth. Upon reflection, I realized why my time management was so bad. On the surface, it looked like I had just allowed students too much time in the exploration section of the lesson. Looking more closely, I realized that I should have stopped the exploration section. Many students gave answers that indicated that either the lesson section's instructions were unclear or that the students ...
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Grading Schemes, Rubrics and the use of Tactile Aids in Mathematics Teaching

This week was cut short due to Hurricane Helene's landfall on Thursday. We had some pleasant rain all day and into the night and luckily there was no significant damage that occurred in the area.

That meant that our class would only have met on Tuesday. Then, we discussed various grading schemes and how to implement rubrics.

Grading schemes have evolved in the last twenty years. There are currently many methods of assigning grades some of which are complex algorithms. These grading schemes may induce varying types of group interactions. The menu of various grading schemes nudges readers toward group grading schemes because those schemes are placed at the top. The sense I have from modern pedagogy is a focus on the need to develop group work among students.

I hope we will examine at how group assessment schemes translate into individual assessments. As I understand it, schools are still assessed based on individual student assessments and the links between group work and school success seem especially pertinent to educators.

After looking at grading schemes that vary from individual exams to assigning the group grade to all members, we looked at grading rubrics. These lessen the grading burden on teachers because we can choose one from a menu of achievement levels under a set of categories. As a student who sees these same methods in his classes, I wonder how students perceive them.

Our examination of evidence-based teaching methods has encouraged exploration when designing lessons for Step II.  This Tuesday, I will give my first Step II lesson on linear expressions using Algebra Tiles. I found an early work on this topic by Geesje Thorton who examined the relationship between learning style and the use of algebra tile in his Master's thesis in Secondary Mathematics Education.

Reference: 
Thornton, G. J. (1995). Algebra tiles and learning styles (Master's thesis, Simon Fraser University).

The paper is found here in its entirety: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/56370919.pdf

The findings are remarkable. Student learning style has no impact on the perception of algebra tiles. Furthermore, the researcher noted that learning style did not predict attitudes toward mathematics nor group work, which he contrasted with the then-extant literature on the topic.

Secondly, he found that the student learning style when combined with algebra tiles did not predict achievement and also noted that all students showed high performance on achievement assessments after the lesson period.

Lastly, students indicated that their learning was enhanced by the use of algebra tiles. 

Importantly for future teaching, this paper of over 200 pages has in it a sequence of lessons that lasted 6 weeks, all of which used algebra tiles. It is complete with lessons, worksheets and homework. It seems suitable to incorporate into a long-term teaching plan. This lesson sequence was given to over 140 students in Canadian public schools and seems like a fruitful starting point for educators who want to link tiles and algebra.

I look forward to my first Step II lesson this week and hope that the lessons from Steps II and III translate to an improved lesson. Last year in Step I, we were less concerned with Evaluating student performance on learning objectives while in Step II it appears that this will become more of a focus. The need to bring assessment to the fore has had a positive impact on my lesson planning because time management is now crucial since these assessments must be collected at the end of the period for review later in the semester. Classroom time management is something I struggled with in Step I so it is good that there is a classroom deliverable that makes time management imperative. I hope it goes well.

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