A Classroom For Everyone

The theme of the week in math was creating an open classroom where all students are able to exemplify their learning. Rich tasks, differentiated instruction, and flexibility in the classroom all revolved around ways we as teachers can help create a math class that all students will enjoy and learn.

Rich tasks are problems that allow the students to connect to mathematics which helps them become more interested and engaged in the subject. As a class we created a criteria for creating a rich task. Some of the criteria was that it was to incorporate collaboration and discussion and have the students use their own curiosity or engagement. Out of the criteria created these two stood out to me the most. Giving the students the opportunity for them to be creative will help them be engaged in the topic and put forth more effort. Collaboration is also key to creating rich tasks. As seen in the modules from the previous week, students are better able to learn when they are allowed to work in groups compared to when having to work individually. Steve Hewson also provides a more in depth explanation of how rich tasks help students improve mathematically in his article What Is a Mathematically Rich Task?.

As a teacher I feel that integrating rich tasks will be beneficial to all members of the classroom. The rich tasks will help the students become more engaged but also help teachers evaluate students. Rich tasks provide for multiple answers and helps the teacher understand the learning process that students use. Teachers can evaluate students for their problem solving skills and work habits instead of assessing the student for the final answer as they used to.

This week I also participated in a webinar that focused upon differentiated instruction strategies. While the presenters gave use twenty resources the resource that caught my eye was a math focused version of Tic-Tac-Toe. This game put a twist on the classic version and allowed the students to practice their math skills while being a little competitive. The game offered a variety of math subjects and levels to choose from. While the game was a great resource our webinar group also discussed how the game could be altered for the students in the classroom. A unique idea that was presented was having the students make up their own questions which their opponent had to answer correctly in order to be able to place an ‘x’ or an ‘o’ in that square. The resource was great and certainly one that I will take into my future classroom.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.funbrain.com/games/tic-tac-toe-squares

The Mindset Modules also conveyed the message of creating a classroom for all students. The question 18 x 5 had the same answer for all students but, contained multiple strategies on how the students solved the problem. Being able to see the difference between each solution allowed me to realize how many possibilities there are to solving a question with one answer. In my classroom I hope to help encourage students to solve the problem in the way that helps them understand math and to not only solve the problem by punching numbers into a calculator.