What's Next?

November 27^th, 2008

Well, I have come to the last few days of my official blogging. (My course is over today!) I have enjoyed this experience as I find it very helpful to reflect, in writing, on my practices and the ups and downs I have experienced in this whirlwind journey. I am no where near where I want to be in terms of teaching through problem solving, but I feel I have come so far since I began. I am still working through some things such as how to ask the right questions, especially in class when you are on the spot teaching, and how to plan for this. Marian Small talks a lot about planning for questioning and has done some research on how to plan your math lessons to ask the right questions. This is something I will do more research on. I also feel I do not always know how to bring students where they need to be in terms of attainment and achievement of outcomes. I am resisting the urge of just telling them, but there are times when I do not know where to go from there.

The biggest change I want to see is for me to throw away the actual units of study that is now guiding me and helping me to choose investigations, and go toward a more holistic approach where I am not doing problems involving number patterns for two weeks, and then geometry for five and then on to something else. I want to be able to pose problems that does not necessarily achieve outcome 1, 2 and 3, in unit 4, for example, but pose problems in a way that at the end of the year students will have achieved all outcomes. In thinking about the logistics of this, I wonder then how would my assessment be different. How would I go about communicating student progress to home? Again, something to think about.

As I continue to learn how to teach math through problem solving, I know I will face more challenges, and more hiccups. I am confident I will work my way through these problems and be a better teacher for it. My students are doing very well thus far, and have come a very long way since September. They are becoming more independent and starting to pose their own questions more frequently. I want them to become better questioners and become more confident in themselves and their abilities to do math. I will continue to blog the happenings in my class, and please feel free to comment when you feel necessary. I would love to know what others think about what I am doing and how I am doing it. Please contact me with any questions or comments. I would love to hear from you.