October 7th, 2008

October 7^th, 2008

As I reflect on what I have been learning about open and closed questioning, I decide that in order for things to work in the manner they are supposed to I am going to have to try to gear my teaching around using open ended questioning. Boaler (2002) states that “Phoenix Park teachers, those that taught math through a problem based approach, believed that the open-ended approach they used was valuable for all students and that it was their job to make the work equitable accessible” (p.60). I want and need all my students to be able to have access to the problem and for them to enjoy success. Boaler (2002) states that students, who were taught in a problem based approach, had very different ideas about math, than those that learned math in the traditional way. Student who were taught through problem solving thought math was active, and “did not regard math to be a rule-bound subject involving set methods and procedures that they needed to learn” (p.77) I need my students to think this way as well, so they can begin to apply what they know, and use this knowledge to construct new mathematical knowledge.

One important point I think I need to make here is that in order for all of my students to learn math through problem solving, they all need to be able to actually ‘enter or access’ the problems. They all need to be able to understand the problem, go about it in some way to offer a solution, and from here, learn what it is they need to learn from the problem. I think this is what Boaler (2002) is trying to get at here, as was seen in the above quotes. As Boaler (2002) talks about the experiences students had in math at Phoneix Park, she emphasizes that the “openness of the activities teachers chose to use at Phoenix Park enabled the provision of differentiated opportunities” (p.57). This is very important because I want all of my students, regardless of their abilities, to reach their highest potential in math, and ultimately in life. By choosing the appropriate tasks, open tasks, I can provide different access points that are geared towards the different students in my class that would enable all of these students to work at their own individual levels.