2009/09/22

Journal Entry #1

I have to admit that I have never gone through American high school education and so I am happy to have an opportunity of this first-hand experience. On Monday afternoons, I become a part of the Advanced Placement (AP) Statistics class with Ms. Colleen Ringquist at the local Middlebury Union High School. The selective nature of this subject implies that the class should be full of eager students. Thus no problems with student attention should occur.

I came in, introduced myself and received a warm welcoming. They lent me the textbook (made by a Williams College math professor) so that I could follow the class. No new material was being covered this time because the students were about to have an exam on Wednesday. The 80min long revision session took a form of questions on homework and a revision sheet problems provided by Ms. Ringquist.

I like the teaching style of Ms. Ringquist so far. At first, she provided a visual help on homework by screening the problem on board and then showing how to solve it using graph sketching and calculator calculations (apparent use of technology). She did not, however, spoon-feed the students with answers; she gave them a plate of different ways how to find them on their own instead. For example, she presented both logical and algebraic way to solve a question about normal distribution. She also kept using the time efficiently as she stressed the point that students, who had no problems with homework examples being presented, could work on their next homework set. Then she provided some time to finish up the homework and went around student-to-student to check the solutions.

It is interesting how she assess the students – if they seem to have put appropriate effort to the homework and their answers seems mostly right, they get full 10 points. If they omit some problems or do not do them even after they get a second chance on the beginning of the class, they get a fewer number of points (estimated by the amount of problems and effort they put in it). This way of assessment cantered around rather the understanding of concepts than the pure thoughtless calculation yielding answers ensures that the students achieve a personal growth.

The second part of the lesson was spent playing a very innovative and attractive math game – “basketball”. All fifteen students were divided into 5 groups randomly by colour cubes thrown at them by a teacher. To do that, students’ full level of attention was necessary. Then, the students were asked to cooperate in groups and solve the sheet of review problems. If they got the right answer for the first time, they got 200 points and one chance to throw a ball into a basket (paper box on a chair). However, they got to choose the distance and the amount of extra points possible to earn  (100pts a few feet away, 200, 300, 400, 500 or 750pts all the way across the classroom). If they needed some extra help from the teacher or if they did not have the correct answer for the first time, they got 100 points and one throw.

There was a team that seemed to solve the questions the quickest and correct way but they always kept trying to score the most difficult 750pts shot. Although they looked very athletic, they did not succeed one single time. The other team, however, understood the concept of the “money in the bank” idea and went for the relatively simple 300pts shots instead. Two guys on that team looked very sporty but they did not want to try scoring at all. I had a feeling that they felt the game was a little bit inappropriate for them as almost college students, or they just did not want to participate in front of me. They let the third, the least athletic guy to try scoring and he succeeded several times. Thus, despite the fact that this team was not the quickest and the most accurate one, they won. By playing a reward-system game of this kind, students learn other than mathematical skills as well (e.g. strategy of decisions, considering risks).

Moreover, students tend to be engaged, entertained and frankly enjoying the class by playing the revision games. Ms. Ringquist told me that she has other games like darts or blackjack too. The card game is supposedly the student’s favourite. I guess that the couple of guys I mentioned as not feeling “cool” throwing a ball in the math class would feel that playing cards is more age-appropriate.

During the lesson, I was helping Ms. Ringquist checking the answers of review problems while she went around and investigated on everybody’s data collected for a project. While doing that, I also noticed the classroom setting, learning environment and some characteristics of the textbook used. I will talk about these in further details during my next journal entries.