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Math (Un)Fair at West Point Grey Academy

On Tuesday 6 December, West Point Grey Academy hosted a Math (Un)Fair with grade 5-6(?) students presenting activities on probability and fairness. Prior to the fair, The students created games with that were either fair or unfair based on the likelihoods of participants winning or losing. They were required to list out all possible outcomes and calculate theoretical probability. At the math (un)fair, the students acted as game hosts, and collected experimental data, where they would record results and calculate experimental probability. Overall, the event appeared to be a success, students took pride in their mathematical (and artistic!) work, as well as celebrated the work of their peers. Students continued to develop their understanding of mathematical probability through the interaction with their participants, and some continued to make adjustments to their game and hosting process to improve their methods. It seemed that all hosts and participants were engaged in the activities...
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Final thoughts...

As someone who has spent years tutoring mathematics, but not having taught math in the public school setting/formal school classroom, I found this term studying secondary math instruction methods engaging. I was excited to have learnt about the various methods of engaging students, particularly through interdisciplinary investigations, such as math and art projects. Over the course of this term, I spent time rediscovering my past and current identity as a mathematical person, as I have not pursued mathematics in several years. Many of my assumptions about the learning of mathematics stems from my experiences as a math learner in high school and university. I recognize the journey ahead to broaden my experiences in the teaching and learning of mathematics.  I was also able to draw parallels and differences between the New Zealand Mathematics Curriculum, which I studied under, and the previous, current, and incoming BC curriculum. This course, along with attending the BCAMT confe...
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Micro-Teaching Reflections

Micro-teaching in a three teacher team proved to be very challenging, particularly with the short time restraint. In the feedback forms, we received are largest proportion of criticism in content and timing. The two are inter-related as we made errors in estimating how much time each activity would take. The first segments of the lesson took much more time than anticipated, particularly reviewing and explaining an earlier concept from a hypothetical previous lesson. (Our students weren’t sure how to respond.) A helpful comment noted that that we could have done a review as an entire class, rather than a peer activity. In hindsight, perhaps a conceptual review rather than a calculation would have sufficed. A positive comment we received was that we distinguished between simple and compound interest concepts well, although I can definitely think of better ways (noted below.) The difficulty in this situation was then to adapt the plan on the spot. A possible adaptation was to scrap th...
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Teaching Math for Social Justice

Math education is never unbiased. The contexts of word problems in math classrooms present information from a certain perspective. For example, a question of a pizza box poses students as consumers who eat unhealthy food. Even if the question asked about a healthier food such as quinoa, or kale, there is a factor of a local/global impact - water usage and labour - from the consumption of these particular foods. Of course, information as such is left out of such a problem, and hence we unknowingly, we are teach our students to become ignorant consumers. Stocker presents a smorgasbord of lessons that discuss many social justice topics and provides a way for any teacher to apply to their curriculum. He advises teachers to start with a topic that they would feel comfortable discussing, and to go from there. Although this may seem harmless, it may soon become tricky to navigate if the teacher has not been well-informed of how to facilitate these discussions. It could become a sticky situa...
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Microteaching reflection

Yesterday, in small groups, we taught each other micro-lessons around a topic that was non-math/non-curricula. I decided to teach a lesson on a figure skating: waltz jump (on the ground) - Lesson plan in previous post. Reflecting upon the experience, I was a little nervous throughout the process, teaching a skill that I had done over and over again, but had not thought much about the learning of the process in over ten years. Although a clear lesson plan was drawn out, I did not review it as much as I should have, and smaller details were omitted. (Waltz jump along the arc of a circle and connects to the edges used.) My peers seemed to enjoy the task of learning about the skating boot, knee health, and performing the jump, and all written comments were positive. I ran out of material at the end, and as this was as far as I had done in figure skating, I wasn't entirely sure how to proceed from there. (This shows in two feed back forms that indicated that my area of improvement was...
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Lesson Plan for Figure Skating: Waltz Jump

Lesson Plan Date: 10/18/2017 Grade/Class: EDCP342A Length: 10 minutes 1. Measurable Objective(s): Students will be able to: Identify the edges on a skating boot/blade Practice a healthy use of the knee to bend and jump Perform a waltz jump on the ground 2. Required Prior Knowledge and Skills: • Walking • Balance on one foot 3. Review Needed: • None 4. Materials, Repertoire, Equipment needed: • Ice skates 5. Agenda: Ice Skate Anatomy Edges, Weight, and Momentum Jump Prep Completing the jump 6. Le...
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