The two sections I attended today was on Project Based Learning in STEM (Carl Janze & Mike Hengeveld) and Assessment based on KDU (Sonya Semail, Tanya Noble, Sue Bankonin). I want to record some of my thoughts I had after these powerful presentations.

 

Project Based Learning in STEM

Mike and Carl presented how they have successfully used projects as a way to promote the scientific process and engage students with the new curriculum. Their success is inspiring as their project is the application of what they are learning; using projects as a platform, they help students connect what they are learning to the real world, bringing context and meaning to content knowledge. My question is then, can this be done with math as a stand-alone?

I strongly believe in PBL as a tool of connecting learning to applications, but it requires coordination across different disciplines. Real world applications does often limit itself to a specific field, but rather draws on information from different fields, which is one of the curricular competencies in the new curriculum. The problem is STEM program is a program that coordinates the different disciplines and has a shared final project across these courses while many schools do not have the coordination between the programs, making organizing a shared project difficult.

However, there are topics in mathematics that lends itself very well to project based learning, such as statistics and data, exponential growth in banking, projectile motion with quadratics. While there are limited inter-disciplinary collaborations and limited time (on practicum), I do plan on trying out project based learning/assessment for the data and statistics unit and document some of my thoughts and preparations in a separate post.

 

KDU and LO in Math Assessment

This session presented great ideas on setting up and developing the classroom culture of mathematics. Assessment is done periodically and assesses the learning outcomes within an unit. Based on evidence provided by students, they are assigned either NY (not yet), K (know, can do with assistance), KD (know, can do independently), and KDU (know, can do independently, and demonstrates sophisticated understanding) to any given learning outcomes. Their final grade is then determined by the amount of KDU/KD/K/NYs given to their learning outcomes.

This set up makes it clear to students the learning objectives they need to work on in order to improve their grades. These are accessible to students on MyEd so they know at any given moment, the learning objectives they need to work on. Checkpoints are given regularly that targets specific LOs, students who provide evidence for the level of achievement on the LO will be updated (overwriting their previous evidence).

Accompanying this system, is the ability for students to rewrite checkpoints. Rewriting encourages students to revisit learning objectives they had trouble with and make improvements. Much of math assessment is done as a one-time deal, where students are required to prepare for the assessments within a certain period of time. There are also little incentives for students to look at their mistakes they have made. Rewriting encourages students to revisit and go over topics they have difficulties with and make gradual improvements.

It makes a lot of sense that math assessment should be continuous and constantly updated. It does not make sense for students to throw away knowledge just because they are done with the test or the course. One does not throw away their vocabulary after a vocab test, so why should they do that for math? By giving students the opportunity to write, teacher signal to students how mathematics should be studied. Rewriting in conjunction with having specific LOs provides a guide for students to structure their learning and opportunities for students to show evidence of improvement.

Despite the amount of work that would be required if one were to implement rewrites, I want to test out mechanisms that would encourage students to go back and relearn weaker topics and provide the opportunity for them to demonstrate evidence of understanding. The idea I wish to promote in mathematics (in lower grade levels) is that learning math is fluid and continuous and this will be something I put into consideration in the lesson planning for my next units.