For my first goal, include more real-life situations in the math classroom, I am finding some information, but running into the same problem that I have in the past. I have researched this topic before and find many resources, but not ones that I find useful. There are many sites that discuss the importance of bringing the real-world into the math classroom, but not many that give ideas and projects on how to do so. I have found a few new resources, but nothing that is catching my attention. I might need to use these sites that I am finding and use the ideas to begin to develop a unit or two on my own. I was hoping to find some project ideas on the internet that are developed and I can just tweak them to work in my classroom, but there are not many people that have posted about their successes thus far. I am wondering why there is so much research showing the importance of real-life activities in the classroom, but not many ideas out there of how to do it? It is aggravating when this is the case. It makes me wonder why this is the case… is it that many people get frustrated with this approach and revert back to the direct instruction methods?
My other goal is coming along nicely. I plan to improve my lessons so they include the correct citations that identify the resources I used. I do not see any problems with this goal as of now. I am noticing, however, that it does take more time to identify the old resources than expected. It is hard to find some of the same resources anymore, so I have been finding myself swapping out the old pictures and data with new information that is similar and I can easily site the resource.
It sounds as if you are having the same problem as I am with older resources. I am also doing some swapping myself. It does produce more work, but I seem to be finding some better resources than before. I adapted my lesson plan format to include a small area for documenting my sources and it seems helpful. Good Luck!
ReplyDeleteI agree that there are many sites out there that want to tell you how to do things, but they lack in showing you how to do things. I have run into many of the same problems, and end up spending a lot more time than I thought in completing my research. I end up taking every little bit that I can find, and trying to implement it in chunks instead of trying to come up with a whole lesson that is real-world based. In fact, I use the state tests to determine how they implemented their real-world problems to mirror that so my students have familiar questions to work off of.
ReplyDeleteI have also ran into this problem as well. In professional development at my school and for others in my district, we have been told to make math as real as possible and to incorporate as many real-life situations as we could. But like you have found, when looking for ideas or lessons via internet, there are few to find. I believe that this maybe the case because many teachers, not by their own will, are having to teach from a curriculum book and they are not able to incoporate things as they wish.
ReplyDeleteThis is my 4th year teaching. For my first 2 years, I was at a school that did everything by the book and every lesson had to be taught regardless. With that in mind, I tried to make teaching as fun and interesting as I could. At my current school, we are given the opportunity to make learnimg as real as we can and provide children with real learning opportunities. By allowing me the freedom to do this in my classroom, it has made teaching much more enjoyable. :)