Abstract

                How can three math teachers make algebra a more interesting and exciting course for thirty students?  By allowing our students, in groups of five, to use their imagination and construct a catapult that may splash their teachers with water balloons.  In traditional classrooms students are not actively involved in learning mathematical concepts and therefore do not retain information that is needed in future mathematics.  Our project engages the students through building and using catapults and learning the mathematical skills behind the medieval machinery.  Their creativity will be challenged, but rewarded at the end of the six weeks.  The students will use polynomials, physics behind projectile motion, and angle properties along with being able to master the Excel program in estimating distance and efficiency.  With adequate funding and support, our students will build a strong sense of mathematics in the classroom and apply it to the outside world, as well as build a sense of responsibility and communication.

Description        

We are striving to achieve the attention and motivation of young mathematical students to excel and enjoy their math course.  We are proposing a project that we believe will engage our students beyond that of a traditional classroom environment.  We strive for communication, cooperation, and motivation.  Although the traditional classroom environment is beneficial to students, we believe that our approach will greater benefit all students’ understanding and attitude toward learning mathematics in a different way- a more physical way.  Mathematics should be engaging and exciting for students and we will achieve that. 

We have found that our own students’ lack of enthusiasm, when it comes to mathematics, is deterring their ability to understand and explain concepts.  We wish to bring outside resources and applications to our classroom and students.  This will strengthen students’ knowledge of mathematics by providing extensive hands-on activities.  Our project revolves around concepts found in algebra, geometry, and physics.  The lessons in the project pinpoint background concepts that students need to learn to better apply these subjects in the real world.  With these lessons and activities the students will not only work with these concepts, but apply them to a physical problem.  Although we have resources in our limited time to offer the students, the execution of the project allows us to incorporate background knowledge and to reinforce that knowledge.    

Rationale

Our project involves having students build catapults in order to sharpen their algebra, geometry, and physics skills and understanding.  The main goal is to have students apply concepts within these subjects to situations that are not usually seen inside the classroom.  We plan to introduce this project idea with a short five-minute video we have designed and shot ourselves.  The video gives an artistic and visually stimulating view on the high school project, which we believe will grab the attention of our students. 

Throughout the six week period that this project covers, the students will be engaged in several benchmark lessons that pinpoint exact concepts that will be helpful in building and using catapults.  These lessons will help the students to collect, record, and analyze data.  In turn the students will work together and apply their information in constructing a working catapult.  The students will have the information on how far their particular catapult can propel items, such as water balloons at a given object.  The students will learn about quadratic functions in order to help them recognize parabolas and the movement an object makes when being launched. They will also be able to solve these functions to find theoretical and realistic solutions to problems presented.  With these solutions the students will be able to provide graphical representations of problems and situations solved.  And of course, at the end of the session the students will be provided water balloons and a target to execute their hard work over the six-week period.

Budget

                We have thirty students in each of our three separate math classrooms, which will need lumber, springs, nuts, bolts, screws, and mechanical tools to construct their catapults.  We each will have six smaller groups in total and have estimated that each of these groups needs one hundred dollars worth of lumber and forty dollars worth of springs, screws, bolts, and nuts.  We will also need three sets (one of each teacher) of mechanical tools including drills, screwdrivers, hammers, handsaws, and rackets.  These tool sets are priced around three hundred dollars each.  Therefore, we request one hundred and forty dollars for each group in our three separate classrooms and nine hundred dollars for each tools set for the three different teachers.  The total amount of funds we require is a total of three thousand four hundred and twenty dollars.

Evaluation Plan         

The proposed project will expand and entertain the ideas and approaches to learning mathematics.  The goals we have established for ourselves are teaching the material in an open questions environment with correct and informative communication, controlling and over-viewing the students in their groups, and communicating in various ways (teaching styles) the algebra, geometry, and physics behind the catapult project. 

The first goal is achieved throughout our collaborated and open-questioned designed lesson plans.  The environment of our classroom has been established throughout the school year and the students’ behavior has already been address.  The groups consist of mixed ability students so that the groups themselves must interact and communicate efficiently and productively to achieve their goals of completing the project.  The skill of mathematical communication is the main goal in having our students work together and learn together.  The students will achieve a new vocabulary for mathematics and use it to communicate amongst themselves and their teachers.  We hope to establish this skill in our students since future mathematics and occupation rely heavily on correct and understood mathematical concepts and ideas. 

Our second goal will be accomplished by using proximal distance and group leaders to control the students’ volume and keep them on task.  The most effective way to control our students is by having an already established classroom environment which we will achieve prior to the catapult project.  We also rely on our proximal distance to groups to (1) keep an eye on the students and how they are proceeding throughout their work, (2) be available to the groups if they need assistance, and (3) evaluate the students’ understanding and applications to the new mathematics they have been learning.  All our goals are based in our teaching styles and how effectively and efficiently we communicate the concepts needed for the catapults in algebra, geometry, and physics. 

Even though there are three of us, we plan to be completing the catapult project and assignments around the same time.  We all have different teaching styles that benefit each of us, but working as a teaching group we have adopted some approaches to different mathematically concepts that we believe will benefit our classroom.  Collaborating together we can use each others’ quizzes and assignments formats, different classroom management skills,  and have a daily and weekly checkpoint with our groups to insure time is use adequately and timely.

                Our goals as established above are achieved by recording the progress of the students’ individual assignments and collaborative teamwork.  We had integrated a weekly time log system that will be completed by each week’s leader of all the groups.  The time log will be a list of achieved and ongoing goals that the students will meet.  In addition to this, there is a weekly journal entry due that will explain the groups’ progress, the divisions of members’ roles, and any problems the students are having within their projects.  These steps are accomplished by the students to build communication and responsibility.  However, we, as the teachers, must also have a system for evaluation that measures the progress of our students.  We plan to use the students’ time logs and journal entries for a quarter of their grade, but rely more heavily on the assignment of the smaller group and individual activities.  The hands-on activities will incorporate how much and how well a student can communicate mathematics to their classmates and teachers by working problems and writing their logic behind each step.  The responses the students give to our open-ended questions are an effective way to establish a base to what information they are absorbing.  The students will be given additional problems that compose of both conceptual and procedural examples for the weekends to be their only ‘homework’ grades because we strive to communicate the concepts and skill within the school weekdays.  These homework problems allow us to see the progress of our students’ understanding and knowledge of the past week.  The problems become a form of post-assessment for the topics already covered.  Overall, the evaluation of our students amounts to the work they show and communicate to their peers and instructors verbally and written.