Thanks for this thoughtful unit plan outline, Leah.
Rationale: You’ve done a good job identifying generic problem-solving strategies that students can learn from this unit. But although you mention certain real-world problems related to the unit, you don’t specify what these are — and you will need to be able to do this to answer your students’ questions about why they need to learn this topic!
Project: Good idea to connect with physics — a natural connection for this topic! Do make sure to scaffold your students’ skills in measuring and recording physical quantities as some may not be confident doing this kind of data collection.
Assessment: Looks like a reasonable and balanced plan!
Unit elements: Good
Lesson plans: #1: The Math and Me questionnaire from the FNESC resource is a good way to get to know any class, and may be particularly helpful for Indigenous students.
The short review covers some important background knowledge.
The final 30 minutes of the class has students working in groups at whiteboards — but working on what? You’ve said ‘different sections of their textbooks’, but I’m not sure what that means. This is very vague, and there is no clear sense of your pedagogical aims in this long section of the lesson (other than to keep students doing something from the textbook). To make this a useful and meaningful lesson plan, you need to be specific about what students would be working on and observing and why.
#2: The first 45 minutes of the lesson is taken up with teacher-led review and lecture on some important topics, but the very brief and non-specific outline given here does not look like 45 minutes’ worth of material. Again, to make this a usable lesson plan, you need to think through what you are going to teach and how in much more detail. What concepts or terminology might students have difficulty with? (For example, the concepts of ‘adjacent’ and ‘opposite’ sides are relative to a particular angle, while the hypotenuse is an absolute in a right triangle… how could you help students sort out the terminology?)
The algebraic proof of the Pythagorean theorem is clearer, although there is a typo in it (’12’ ought to be ‘1/2’). Will your Apprenticeship and Workplace 11 students be willing and able to follow this algebraic proof? Check with your SA on their opinions about this. Will the students need to be accountable for learning this proof in some way?
The Irene Percival activity/ worksheet on the Chinese gou gu theorem visual proof is a good one. How will you use this to create an open discussion on multicultural perspectives on math?
#3: Interesting to work on modelling in 3D! The word problems you are presenting sound interesting and challenging, but it’s hard to know exactly how they work without seeing the diagrams (which were not included). Will you have ways to help students break these more complex 3D problems down into simpler steps, as you suggest in the rationale? How will you do that? Some detail would be very helpful.
Overall: Good overall sense of the unit and your goals for student learning, but the lesson plans are lacking many important details that will be necessary to carry through on these goals. If you are planning to teach this unit, you will need to think out the details of student activities and teacher-led presentations much more specifically!
Thanks for this thoughtful unit plan outline, Leah.
ReplyDeleteRationale: You’ve done a good job identifying generic problem-solving strategies that students can learn from this unit. But although you mention certain real-world problems related to the unit, you don’t specify what these are — and you will need to be able to do this to answer your students’ questions about why they need to learn this topic!
Project: Good idea to connect with physics — a natural connection for this topic! Do make sure to scaffold your students’ skills in measuring and recording physical quantities as some may not be confident doing this kind of data collection.
Assessment: Looks like a reasonable and balanced plan!
Unit elements: Good
Lesson plans: #1: The Math and Me questionnaire from the FNESC resource is a good way to get to know any class, and may be particularly helpful for Indigenous students.
The short review covers some important background knowledge.
The final 30 minutes of the class has students working in groups at whiteboards — but working on what? You’ve said ‘different sections of their textbooks’, but I’m not sure what that means. This is very vague, and there is no clear sense of your pedagogical aims in this long section of the lesson (other than to keep students doing something from the textbook). To make this a useful and meaningful lesson plan, you need to be specific about what students would be working on and observing and why.
#2: The first 45 minutes of the lesson is taken up with teacher-led review and lecture on some important topics, but the very brief and non-specific outline given here does not look like 45 minutes’ worth of material. Again, to make this a usable lesson plan, you need to think through what you are going to teach and how in much more detail. What concepts or terminology might students have difficulty with? (For example, the concepts of ‘adjacent’ and ‘opposite’ sides are relative to a particular angle, while the hypotenuse is an absolute in a right triangle… how could you help students sort out the terminology?)
The algebraic proof of the Pythagorean theorem is clearer, although there is a typo in it (’12’ ought to be ‘1/2’). Will your Apprenticeship and Workplace 11 students be willing and able to follow this algebraic proof? Check with your SA on their opinions about this. Will the students need to be accountable for learning this proof in some way?
The Irene Percival activity/ worksheet on the Chinese gou gu theorem visual proof is a good one. How will you use this to create an open discussion on multicultural perspectives on math?
#3: Interesting to work on modelling in 3D! The word problems you are presenting sound interesting and challenging, but it’s hard to know exactly how they work without seeing the diagrams (which were not included). Will you have ways to help students break these more complex 3D problems down into simpler steps, as you suggest in the rationale? How will you do that? Some detail would be very helpful.
Overall: Good overall sense of the unit and your goals for student learning, but the lesson plans are lacking many important details that will be necessary to carry through on these goals. If you are planning to teach this unit, you will need to think out the details of student activities and teacher-led presentations much more specifically!