Pro-D Day - FASD Seminar

I attended the online seminar on FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder).  We went over what FASD was, which is an often undiagnosed disorder that may result in students being behind developmentally and struggling with sensory input, transitions, memory, executive function, and more.  We then covered what we could do as teachers to support students who may have FASD such as having routine, building relationships with them, and coregulation.

It was interesting to learn about coregulation- essentially using yourself as a calm basis to help calm the student down.  It makes sense that if you are not calm as a teacher, students will be able to tell and subsequently will match your emotions.  I think it's something to keep in mind, especially since teaching can be so stressful at times, that we also need to be practicing methods to stay steady so that we don't pass on our disregulation to our students.

What surprised me was how many people probably have FASD- they gave the statistic that 4% of people likely have the disorder.  I had actually never heard of FASD before attending this session so I wasn't expecting that high of a proportion of the population to have it.

What I would want to follow up on is some of the methods that they gave for helping students with FASD and how they balanced supporting those students' needs with the other students.  For example, they mentioned that one solution they had for a student was to allow them to pace in the back of the classroom to help them concentrate, but I feel like that could be immensely distracting to the other students in the class.  I know that there will always have to be some sort of give and take in the classroom with different students; they can't all have the same needs.  On the other hand, it's true that finding certain accommodations can actually help all students, as you never know who might be having an off day, who might have an invisible or undiagnosed disability, or just otherwise would benefit from having extra support.

Curricular Micro Teaching Reflection

There were both positives and negatives about this curricular micro teaching experience.

Our activity was engaging/fun and we were able to graph our data to form connections for the students between the hands on part and the math.  In general, I think that our teacher presences were also fine.

However,  I think there was space for us to grow in terms of fully teaching the topic at hand.  The way we set up the lesson was as an "after" to a lesson where students had already gone over exponential functions, but I don't think it was fully clear to our class on what they were using the activity to learn about and that was reflected in some of our feedback.  I think that we could've gone over the lesson together more as a teaching team beforehand so that we would've been more clear on what was going to be covered and what we wanted to emphasize because we ended up going in slightly different directions in our thinking mid lesson.

Feedback posted below:

 

 

Curricular Micro Teaching Lesson Plan

Curricular Micro Teaching Lesson Plan by Ben W, Doreen, Minami
Lesson: Pre-Calculus 12 - Exponential Functions: Exponential Decay
Objective:  Understanding exponential decay using a dice rolling activity.

Content Learning Standard: exponential functions and equations (solving problems in situational contexts)

Practical details: 15-minute lesson, 9 students

Materials needed:
200 Dice (the more the merrier)
Computer to graph (desmos) (one computer per group)

Structure:
Introduction (3 minute):
Gauge prior experience with exponential decay. (ie. what should the graph look like?  What are the details of what an exponential equation looks like?)
Briefly explain what it is and where we can see it in the world (ex. radioactive decay)

Dice Rolling Activity (8 minutes):
Learners will break into groups of 4-5, splitting the dice between them.  Explain rules in groups.
Each group will roll the dice together, removing the specified values rolled from the dice pool. Then record the dice that remain in the pool. Then students repeat until a specified number of rolls have been completed.
Example:
build pool of dice, and appoint record keeper
roll the pool of dice, removing the specified values (ie all 1s) and returning the rest to the pool. Record the dice remaining in the pool in our graph.
Repeat step 3 as many times as desired (ie 8 rolls)

Connection:  this activity models exponential decay of the form y=100(⅚)^x, where 100 is our starting number of dice, and each time we are keeping ⅚ of the roll.  Each time we roll, we are keeping (roughly) ⅚ of dice from the previous roll (aka our new y is the previous y*⅚)

Note:  we can let the rolling go until time for closing without regard for specifying a number of rolls.  If they roll through all of the dice early, we can ask them to try it again and see if they get the same thing, adding more data to the graph.

Closing (~4 minutes):  
Pose questions to the whole group as a discussion to have them consolidate their learning.

What is the expected formula of our dice experiment?
Did the groups get the same result?  Does it match up with our formula? -> can plot w desmos (exponential fitting) very easily
Why is the result not the expected result from the formula?
What could we change to make this experiment more ”accurate” to the formula?

Extra Qs as needed:
Would the dice that we removed also model something?  If so, what?  If not, why not?
What would happen if we started with a different number of dice?

Battleground Schools

 The first thing that this reading had me pause on was the cultural assumptions of what someone who likes math may be like- although I agree that what was written is accurate, I think that there is also another dimension to it.  For me, the first thing that leapt to mind was that Asian kids are often expected to like and be good at math.  I definitely also saw the stereotypes of nerd and such playing out in my schooling, but there was also a certain profiling where for many people not being good at math was accepted, but the Asian kids in particular were questioned if they struggled.

Another part that struck me was the mention that they wanted to ban diagrams and geometry from being taught.  I'm a very analytical person where algebra is my forte over geometry, but even I can admit that having a diagram or some sort of picture is one of the most helpful things to think through something and see it in a different way.  I honestly had to stop for a second and try to process learning math without geometry.

The last thing that I'm left wondering about is the state of things today.  Of course, having been in high school just a few years ago, I've perceived that there is still an awful lot of direct lecturing and testing about what you can do and not for understanding.  However, I also went on a school observation in the spring where I briefly talked to a new math teacher who ran his classroom in a way where students didn't take notes and there was almost no lecturing.  Instead he had them working on whiteboards every class to put together patterns themselves before he consolidated their knowledge at the end of class with the more mathematical terms.  I also have watched a few other teachers who occasionally did work on whiteboards, but nothing to the extent that that one teacher did.  It was very interesting to watch.

Lockhart's Lament

 This article was very interesting to read.  I agree that a lot of what we teach students is not because they will specifically use it later in life, but to develop their problem solving skills.  I also agree that just teaching students formulas doesn't necessarily push them to think, rather just encourages them to memorize a process.  This is exactly what Skemp brought up with his relational vs instrumental understanding argument, where there are two ways that we can understand.  Lockhart says that we only really have instrumental understanding in our schools, but that we should really emphasize ways of teaching that lead students to relational understanding.  Now, I do think that it is difficult (as Lockhart acknowledged) to fully switch to something like he described, but what we can do in my opinion is to try and teach with the Socratic method when we can.

One point where I am less inclined to Lockhart's argument is his thoughts about notation.  Although he states that he is only disinclined to "excessive" notation, I feel like the notation that is introduced is for clarity in communication.  I agree that students should be allowed to understand the subject in any way that makes sense to them, but part of math is also about communicating your thoughts to others.  Using the same notation is an easy way to stay on track with what everyone is talking about.  As I wasn't entirely clear on what was meant by "excessive," I'm not sure that I fully disagree with Lockhart here, but it suffices to say that I appreciate notation and I think it's part of learning any new subject.  Even non-scholarly subjects have notation- for example in volleyball, you soon learn about bumping, setting, and spiking, although as a newcomer you may simply be thinking "ah yes I need to hit the ball."

Micro Teaching Reflection

 

My micro teaching lesson was on how to fold a paper shuriken (throwing star).  Overall, I thought it went well.  There were a couple main things noted by everyone about the lesson.  

 The first (which I was very aware of) was that we ended up being a little short on time.  Although I had judged throwing stars as being quick to complete, I didn't account enough time for re-explaining if someone missed part of the explanation, nor did I account (enough) for the fact that the students were origami beginners.  When I made one to practice, it only took me a few minutes so I figured that about double that would suffice for everyone else, especially since we had just done some other origami in class.  I'm honestly not sure if I could've picked anything easier for origami that would have been satisfying, but I will try to keep in mind for the future that my guesstimated timings still need work and so I should plan for situations where I run short on it.

The other main comment that I got was that the explanations were clear.  I particularly appreciated the note about giving warnings for tricky parts.  I hadn't specifically planned on doing that as anything more than a thought in my own head that those parts would take longer, but I think that it also helped everyone feel more calm about trying out the new fold because it had been acknowledged to be difficult.  I think it also can help in general to warn students to pay close attention to those particular instructions and I'll try to keep incorporating that into my lessons.

Although we ended up cutting it very close, everyone got their throwing star done at the end and one person even mentioned that it was the first time they had really accomplished folding a piece which made me happy to hear.