Hey everyone!
Hope all is going well for all of our fellow NORCAN colleagues! Here at Otterson, we've been hard at work on many different fronts over the last couple of months and I just wanted to give you a small update on some of the things we've got going on.
1) Over the first few months of the year, Mike and I spent time designing projects and implementing them in each of the grade 4-6 classrooms. During these projects, we spoke to the students about the importance of students supporting students and the creation of a community of learners who are staunchly supportive of each other. We stressed the positives of risk-taking and emphasized that being wrong is part of the process, not a reason to be discouraged, but an opportunity to challenge one's self to build understanding. After each discussion (completed on a class by class basis), we implemented our projects and encouraged the students to "leave no one behind", thereby promoting a collective understanding among classmates. We documented the ensuing project work both pictorially and using video and were pleased to see the students supporting each other and ensuring that even those students who struggled were being coached by their fellow peers to higher levels of comprehension. This process has been mirrored in our junior high classrooms, in addition to peer-to-peer tutoring initiatives, which are currently being experimented with within classrooms. Of course, the eventual goal is to expand this beyond the classroom and between grades.
2) We have designed a questionnaire that will be answered by all students between grades 4-9 over the next couple of weeks. This will provide a better overview of our school's attitude toward mathematics. I've attached it just below so you can view and potentially adapt/use it for your own schools.
Otterson%20Math%20Questionnaire.docx
3) Mike and I are also developing small pre-unit and post-unit questionnaires that teachers can use to determine level of comfort and understanding with concepts prior to experiencing the next step on particular topics and after said topics are concluded. We were thinking that these small questionnaires could be passed on to the teachers of those students for the following school year, so that they come into every unit with some idea of how all students in their classes will respond to math on a topic-by-topic basis.
4) The grade 8 students in our school are soon to begin this year's edition of the Snack Attack project, which is the cross-curricular science/math project that Mike and I used last year at Otterson and Linda has been also using at Ranvik.
5) Otterson and Ranvik are both planning a Math Fair on Pi Day (March 14) and we'd love to see some other schools joining us in this initiative!
The next post from Otterson will feature the results of our questionnaires and give an update as we head into the Math Fair.
Jesse
PS: On a personal level, I'm really enjoying the updates that all of you are posting. It's very helpful to have such bright minded colleagues contributing stellar ideas, as we continue to push for optimal practices in our classrooms.
Comments
Hi Jesse,
We would love to get in on the Pi Day activities.
Let us know what you had in mind.
Kent