Make Math Rich, and Wild

Hello readers!

                Another week has passed, which means we had the privilege of learning more about teaching math more effectively. This week we focused on getting rich in math class, learning about the value and wealth that revolves around question and activity design. Rich Tasks follow guidelines that involve creating activities that encourage the students to work collaboratively, logically and the most important attribute: room for interpretation and discussion. How I would describe the nature of math lessons that I was taught in the past would be rigid and boring. I say rigid because I do not believe there was any goal of making the lessons and the activities “rich”, they were structured so that we were all to learn the same strategies, skills and get all the same answers. My math classes were boring to me primarily because I didn’t excel in the class, but also because they were not very engaging. I value my time in my math classes in the past because my personal experiences are now my clear guideline of how I never want to teach my math classes.

                If we ever want our student's to think math is fun, we actually have to make math fun. I believe that math has an underlying tone of seriousness about it, a driving force that has caused teachers to stay in their lane when it comes to lesson and unit design. The amount of skill-based content math involves, means it takesa very creative mind to take math curriculum expectations and teach them in different ways. Comparatively, subjects like science, geography and history are often littered with lessons and activities that would be qualified as rich tasks. I think the best way to create math lessons based around rich tasks that bolster student engagement is through differentiated instruction and blending other subjects into math. 

               Cross-curricular planning is difficult, but can be the best tool to create rich tasks in math because it. This weekend I took part in the Project Wild seminar day, which focused on implementing outdoor and environmental education across all subjects. I really like the idea of teaching math topics through an environmental lens, because it directly connects math to the real world. One of the activities we did at the seminar involved tracking the population of animals within the same food chain. Part of the activity was the accumulation and organization of the data, through math skills. This activity blended math with deeper thinking in regards to population trends because of human impact. Teaching our students that processes in the real world rely on math operations may bridge the gap for the students between the skills they use in class and why they are so useful.

                Below is a link that takes you to a Webinar made by the Ontario Teachers’ Federation that focuses on bringing math out of the traditional classroom and into the great wide open. The webinar is catered for grades K-6, but involves strategies and activities that can be used in intermediate settings as well.

Taking Math Outdoors!

Math can be as fun as it is useful, exciting as it is challenging, and flexible as it is rigid. It is very easy for educators to rely on the old model of lesson and unit design for math class. It is up to us as educators to try a little harder in order to create a math community in our classrooms that is more about learning for understanding then learning for memorization and repetition.

Thank you!!