Creativity in the classroom is an
essential part of engaging students and allowing their ideas to be accepted and
enhanced through exploration and working with others. In my geometry classroom
it is important for students to make connections between topics as well as
connections to what they see in their real world. Students in my class
communicate and collaborate with others to solve problems and communicate their
thoughts using precise language and thinking. Working with others and
collaborating enhances individual thinking and allows students a chance to
communicate their thoughts and ideas. Students in my class work in groups to
solve complex problems, using the large whiteboards available for each group,
as a way to share their knowledge with members of the group as well as between
groups. In my class, we value student thinking a lot and want to make sure that
their thinking is what they focus on and they have the freedom to demonstrate
this in a more formal way using the thinking that they have recorded on the
boards or through exploration activities.
Through the
structure of the class, students are able to process different types of
information and record them. They are getting information from the instructor,
their peers, as well as their previous knowledge and using this to think
critically. Students label the origin of information, noting that the
instructor gave it or that they knew it prior to being given the task, so they
are utilizing their information literacy to understand that information comes
from a variety of sources. We also discuss the validity of informational
resources, as geometry has a big focus on proofs, we encourage students to ask,
“How do we know?”. We want students to question the origin of information to
support their ability to challenge ideas and think about their knowledge in a
way that might allow them to prove many things using mathematics.
In order to
help students understand the connections they can make between content and the
world around them, I created an assignment using the popular social media tool,
instagram. I provided a short introduction to how the tool will be used to
demonstrate their understanding of concepts from class and how they apply to
things they see outside of school. Students were able to see the benefits and
drawbacks of this type of media tool, and since some students don’t have access
to this application, I allowed them to bring in a picture of their
interpretation of class content in the real world and bring in the same
rationale or justification of thinking that I required of students on
instagram. Using the posts that students provided, I created practice and
review problems for students to prove that these concepts do translate to the
examples that they brought in.
Students
need time to reflect and work independently in order to direct their thinking
in a positive direction. Students in my class often have a chance to reflect on
the concepts that they needed to know in order to solve a particular problem
that they did in groups. Sometimes students will work on a similar problem
independently in order to see how they are able to translate their group
thinking into enduring individual understanding. Combining these two elements
of reflection and individual practice seems to be the most effective way for
students to make sense of the new concepts that they learn. Working in groups,
as well as independently, allows students to use multiple forms of
communication to practice with and demonstrate their knowledge of vocabulary.
When working in groups, they can listen to others use the vocabulary and also
speak using the vocabulary themselves, and then when they practice on their own
and reflect they include justifications for their answers, writing out
vocabulary. These group settings are very effective in allowing students to
practice vocabulary, understand content material, challenge each other’s ideas
and learn how to work with different groups of people in order to get
productive and positive results. Understanding that each group is not going to
always work effectively together and developing strategies for how to overcome
this, is an important life skill so it is important that this is supported and
practiced in the classroom. These groups that we use in the class change every
two weeks so students are getting to work with a variety of different
individuals with diverse learning profiles and personalities.
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