Exploring, Adventuring, Traveling, Trying New Things If you haven't heard, the new trend these days is to go exploring and take advantage of every opportunity to travel. I'm a huge fan of this trend, as you can see above, because life is way too short to stay in one spot forever. Don't get stuck in the same city, state, or country for the rest of your life. God gave us a stinking HUGE world to explore full of different cultures, mountains, sunsets, beaches, trails, and adventures waiting for you to go on. And.... whats this got to do with math?LET YOUR STUDENTS EXPLORE I could honestly end the blog there because those four words sum up my thoughts pretty darn well. But I will continue for the sake of my grade and so you will get a better understanding of what exactly I am talking about. So let's start with a simple example... If I am teaching on quadratic functions, I can simply tell my students that the equation y=ax^2 is a reflection of the equation y=-ax^2 across the x-axis, show them an example and then move on. The students would most likely memorize that rule and move on. Cool. My students get to explore. What's the big deal? WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Oh, I'll fill you in. Peer to Peer Teaching When you give students the freedom to explore topics on their own and discover trends on their own, some will grasp it faster than others. This usually creates a problem in the class because your students are staggered in the learning process. BUT, with this system it actually enhances the process as a whole. Once a student sees the trend or figures out the relation they get to share it with their group members. So now, we see students essentially teaching themselves and then getting to teach their peers. Students teaching students brand new concepts. Pretty cool, right? As the teacher, you are facilitating these discussion and discoveries, nudging brains in the right direction, and making sure groups aren't getting stuck or frustrated. Once many students have caught on and discovered the trend, you can even have a student come to the front of the class and explain their discovery, which is a brand new concept, to the class. COME ON, THAT IS COOL! Recalling Information Imagine sitting down with a student to answer a question on previously learned material. You typically might say, "remember when I lectured on that" or "turn to your notes from that day." The student would flip through their notes and try to remember what you had said in class about that topic. Now imagine if you responded like this, "remember when Tyrone made this discovery in class? Can you remember what he said about that? If not, let's pull Tyrone over and see if he remembers." Again we would see that peer to peer learning as well as Tyrone benefitting from the experience because he's recalling previously learned information. In my own learning experience, I am able to retain information a lot better when I teach someone else the content or discover it myself. When I go back to study the material, I am able to recall information better because I can remember the times I made the discoveries about the content. I can also think back to the times that I had to figure out how to explain what I had just discovered to my peers and put it in a way that was understandable to them. In closing, I have only explained two ways that allowing students to explore new concepts benefits them and other students. The list could go on forever about how this enhances learning. This also makes teaching more fun and interesting because the students are engaged and doing hands on work that allows them the opportunity to take their education in their own hands. Therefore, I urge you to let your students explore. Let them take learning into their own hands. Empower your students because they are so capable and willing to take on this next adventure, they're just waiting for you to let them go.
2 Comments
Kalyn Overweg
11/20/2017 09:35:55 am
Hey Lauren,
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John Golden
12/2/2017 07:02:55 pm
Even if I didn't agree, I'd love the enthusiasm. And the photos make it clear that this is really you. My only caution would be to remember that students have to transition to exploration in math. But if you're intentional and supportive, there's no reason why they can't make that leap. As you say, it's natural.
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AuthorLauren C. Grimes Archives
November 2017
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