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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The Benefits of Creating an Inquiry Based Classroom (and Learning to Implement It)

 A research paper from 2019 that appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looked at the learning of students in a randomized treatment of students placed into one of two groups--one being a traditional lecture-based physics classroom and the other being a classroom that used inquiry-based learning methods. There was no effort to convince students in either group of the effectiveness of their instructional method. The students in the inquiry-based classroom learned the material better compared to their peers in the lecture style class. This result is in line with other research. What's surprising, however, is the students' perceptions of their instructional experience. Students in the traditional classroom reported having a better learning environment compared to their peers in the inquiry-based classroom, who did not rate their instructional method as highly. Yet, the latter group performed better. Researchers posit that this may be due to the cognitive load associated with inquiry-based learning. It shows that teachers have hurdles to cross. Their student's may not feel that their classrooms are as good as traditional ones but in the end, they end up learning more. This suggests that teachers should attempt to design activities that show their students that their classroom experience is worthwhile and that the educational benefits exists.

The paper can be accessed at: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1821936116

And cited as: Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L. S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., & Kestin, G. (2019). Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(39), 19251–19257.

After finishing up on Tuesday by discussing the teaching moves involved in our Mathematics Collaborative activity, we went on to analyze and practice them in class on Thursday.

My main takeaways from the activity is that teachers should randomize their students into groups in a way that allows diverse groupings where students are able to work with all of their peers during the course of a school year. In practice that means using a randomizer that the students cannot trade. For example, if he knows that all spades are one group and hearts are another, he may trade with classmates to get his preferred group. To overcome this, we should present them cards with multiple group signifiers and only after students have their cards and are settled should we tell them what object on the card will be used to create groups.

We used this method in our Thursday class to create groups and our groups discussed the methods employed in our Mathematics Collaborative sessions into summaries for ourselves and our class. 

This is what my group can up with:



The entire class's Padlet is posted at: https://padlet.com/jones_kenneth/thinking-classroom-2tglusrcympf5q26?frame_id=page%3ApHrX2KzdkDRcR-3UB7GpR

The moves that are noted above all stood out for me as central themes of our activity experience.

The idea that groups of three are best are different from our methods in Step 1 and when I have the opportunity to lead a larger class than the one I currently have in Step II, I intend to use that grouping style.

I made particular note of how Mr. Anderson showed us to maintain balance in the group and have everyone participate by subtly changing the group member that transcribes the group's finding.
I also noticed that I carried some of the lesson learned here to my preparation for my first Step II lesson. I noticed how I chose to model the use of mathematical terminology in its appropriate context instead of defining it. Although I have some "lecture" style material in my first class plans, I hope to get better at this method of instruction.

I also noted how to put the benefits on mathematical properties into context. I will use an example of finding quarters in each of my pockets and wanting to find their monetary total. As say, "what benefit is there of the distributive property? Well, if I find 7 quarters in my left pocket and three in my right, how can I find the total? I don't want to multiply 7 and 25 and 3 and 25. Is there anything else that I can do?" As a practice for myself and in the hope that this stimulates inquiry-based learning in my students, I will simply leave the question as posed.

The two weeks that were dedicated to our Mathematics Collaborative activity was well worth the time. I will return to the notes that we created as a class. Taking the lessons and apply them in Step II should be interesting and will lead to growth that I have only recently seen in myself.

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