Comparing Your World

Background

 

The purpose of this project is to get your students thinking on their feet, using math in their everyday lives.  There are several mini projects within the larger project and the order of implementation can be changed, but a couple lessons should be used as introductions to other activities/lectures.  Before working with estimation, the idea of random sampling should be introduced.  Before building shapes out of straws and pipe cleaners, the lesson on patterns and sequences should be taught.

Near the beginning of the unit and after a few lessons, the teacher should assess the attitudes of the students toward the project and make changes if needed.  This is important to do at the beginning, especially if students are not used to this type of classroom lesson structure.  There are several assessments along the way to check whether the students do not only understand the concepts, but are working well in the unit.  Some of the other assessments are for the teacher to better understand the learning styles of the students, to see how the students perceive the work of their partners, and to address any misconceptions of the students or make changes to the classroom.

The debate is scheduled for the second week of the unit and the students should be working on their information gathering outside of class.  Each group should meet with the teacher each day of the week to show their progress in the assignment.  Since the groups will have more than two students each, there is a greater chance that one student will do all of the work and the others will not pull their weight.  To prevent this as much as possible, each students should speak during the debate, having an equal amount of time as his classmates.  Also, each student should fill out a group work evaluation sheet detailing each member’s input into the assignment and the letter grade they would give their partners.  At the end of the bridge building project the students should fill out a similar sheet.  When building the bridges, try to keep the focus on geometry and algebra even though there are physics topics that could be introduced.  Resist the temptation to add in extra information that could end up confusing the students.  If you decide to introduce a few topics in science or physics, tie it into what they already know, what they are currently learning in their other classes, or make it simple enough to understand quickly so that they can continue building their bridges.  This is going to be a time consuming project so the students need to have the plans drawn up by the first day and approved by the teacher.  If the groups are not finished by the last day, they should check out materials and take the bridges home to be completed because all glue must be dry by the time the bridges are tested out on the last day of the week.

At the beginning of each mini project, if there is a special grading rubric for that assignment, show the students so that they know what is to be expected of them.  It should also be explained that the assessments will not be graded, but are to be taken seriously because they can affect how the lessons are taught and possibly their grades along with the grades of their partners.  Only a couple of the assessments will be anonymous to obtain the most honest answers, but all will be confidential and seen only by the teacher unless permission is sought and obtained to post a response.  One last assignment/assessment that should be graded is the student-generated questions for the quiz day (last day of the unit).  Briefly review the topics of the unit and have students come up with questions that will be asked of all the groups.  The types of questions that the groups design will be relevant to what they understood and found interesting in the course.  To make it fair the students should be informed several days in advance of the assignment.  In order to make it worth their while, there should be a grading system which could consist of bonus points during the quiz or bonus points on the grade of the unit project.

Lastly, to make this project as valuable as possible to the students, each lesson should be tied into not only the world around us, but also into math topics that could be seen on the state exams.  This unit project should be a segway for the students to begin thinking independently of the teacher and learn how to be self-initiators when confronted with the unknown.  The students will also begin to link topics that are seemingly unrelated and be prepared to do so in the future.