2009/09/29

Journal Entry #2

I would like to start this journal entry at the point where I stopped a week ago, i.e. describing the classroom setting, learning environment and some characteristics of the textbook used. The class has rather non-traditional setting then a standard layout. There are 12 rectangular tables grouped to pairs so that they create 6 squares tilted differently across the room. The students site around them and face each other, while they are still able to see the teacher and the blackboard. The general feeling of the classroom is homey and room-like. That is reinforced by the fact that the teacher Ms. Ringquist walks around the classroom a lot in order to check students’ progress on tasks (when they are given to them). Moreover, the walls are decorated with tags and posters encouraging “thinking mathematically”, “seeking answers and presenting mathematical thinking”, “justifying” and “asking genuine questions”. They were placed there in order to reinforce an appropriate learning environment: comfortable setting (work-group tables) and serious non-distractive background (walls and no excess furniture).

As far as the discourse language is concerned, the AP Statistics class uses a textbook by a Williams’ college professor written in a high-school friendly language. New terms are introduced with a real-world example and all definitions are evaluated in the text. Exercises first ignore any examples from reality at first and ask students to compute pure data only. I was honestly discouraged to use that book seeing an approach like that but then I turned a page and changed my mind. The exercises develop into those with real data applications so that students, once they are sure they can compute using for example ‘standard normals’ and ‘standard deviations’, can apply the new knowledge. Furthermore, Ms. Ringquist reads the text with students out loud, stopping them sometimes in middle of paragraphs to assure complete concentration on a subject being taught. I could see a great example of a student attention technique of this kind on Monday of this week when I visited again.

The class was starting a new topic of Least Square Regression, Residuals and Regression to the Mean. I noticed a clear outline of the lesson’s structure written down in bullet points and placed in a corner of the blackboard, meaning that students knew what to expect after “going over homework” at the beginning of the lesson. Once the students were reading the textbook, the teacher kept interrupting the reading of Burger King tasty burgers and their protein and fat data relation. She chose to stop after each paragraph or a major point in order to clarify any concerns, paraphrase the text and make warnings about common misconceptions.

Not only Ms. Ringquist teaches math with a clearly structured outline, she also cares about the students. Their relationship is beyond a pure lecturer type one where students know nothing about the professor and the professor barely knows their names. I noticed that as soon as Ms. Ringquist noticed crunches of a injured football player, she wanted to know when and what exactly happened (and also whether he will make it for the upcoming home game or not). Similarly, the students were interested in how the weekend golf tournament go for Ms. Ringquist and her daughter. It is incredibly important to have established a friendly relationship with students so that they see a teacher to be rather a tutor, a guide or a helper than an upper authority presenting certain truth.

On the other hand, a teacher has to be skilled to assure the flow of curricula thought. Approximately a half an hour before the end of the lesson, Ms. Ringquist announced a quick two minute-long ‘stretch’ break. I thought that its intention was to make sure that the students were not getting tired and they could refresh themselves (one class is 80 minutes long). The real idea, however, was to quickly look through a lesson plan and decide what to teach in the last minutes of the lesson. The shortage of the time forced the teacher to alter an original lesson plan and to make sure students were not overwhelmed either by the amount or the speed of the knowledge presented in the last part of the lesson.

In conclusion, I will remember from this lesson, that students are often asked to do an activity thinking of it as a great side-action (basketball game, ‘stretch break’, etc), but teachers have often an academic intention camouflaged behind it.