Although it is a long time coming, I
feel this is a good time for me to reflect on my very first professional conference!
This conference was the California Mathematics Conference, South, in November
of last year in Palm Springs. I am not sure what I was exactly expecting from
the conference, but I know that it was very valuable for me to attend as a
professional math educator. The highlight of the conference was the mass amount
of information (as well as the free
stuff like worksheets, whiteboards, and other resources for the classroom). The
best part of it all was that it was all information that I could go back and
directly use in my classroom. I took many, many notes on all of the sessions I
attended and I am just now reviewing them.
Two of the sessions stood out to me
the most, and no surprise, it was Dan Meyer’s and Jo Boaler’s presentations.
Dan Meyer’s presentation was titled Why Students Hate Word Problems. He has
presented this speech at multiple conferences, which many of you have seen. I
believe this may also be on the website TED.com. He discuss that there are three “acts” to a
word problem. His act one is to have a hook to the word problem to “hook” the students in on the question.
This may include visuals, like a short video clip. Act two is about what tools,
resources, needed to figure out from act one. His point was about students
asking the questions about what resources or information they would need to be
able to solve the question. Act three is the final scene. In an example he used
about graduation. Something along the lines of: two students names being read
every minute, how long would it be until all the names are read? The final
scene would be showing a fast forward clip of the amount of time the graduation
took. There were many other examples Dan Meyer showed in his presentation, and
I am sure most of them could be found on his blog. Some tips or other information
he said in his presentation: create a curious sequel that broadens students
knowledge and practice, try to provoke a deep burning question in creating
these problems, and don’t always look to the text book for good word problems,
they are too confusing and do not make sense in a real world situation. Read
more about on Dan Meyer’s blog page.
From Jo Boaler’s session called Engaging Disaffected Students in Algebra,
there was again too much information to share all of it with you. So, I will
share her key points once again. She brought up four teaching principles: 1.
Engage students as active and capable learners, 2. Teach reasoning (CCSS Math
Practices), 3. Develop collaborative, mathematical community, 4. Opportunity
for student voice. She then went on to explain techniques on how we can
accomplish this in the classroom. Some of her tips were to same things like
“Can you walk me through your thinking?”, or “What I hear you say”. Other
information I got from her session was the metaphor of teaching in color as
opposed to teaching in black and white. Especially with math, I agreed that it
is more about the wide spectrum of understanding and thinking of the students
rather than a shear right or wrong way to think about it or answer.
Overall, I would highly recommend a
professional conference if you have not been to one! It is great for many
things, no matter your content area!
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