My Weekly Report and Reflection 1 (Week 2)

The content for Week 2 was very interesting and provoked some great discussion! In particular, the reading was interesting, and it was a good learning experience to complete the first Professional Reading Circle. It was nice to be able to work as a group with my classmates and to feel like I aided in their understanding of the reading. Furthermore, it was a good icebreaker to familiarize ourselves with each other and to get a feel for each other’s strengths, as well as becoming more comfortable with the others.

One activity that I could not exclude from this blog was the “Mystery Op” equation. Joyce arranged the class into three groups and handed out small cards with the same mystery operation, Δ, on them. Yet, each card showed a different equation involving this mystery operation. Our duty was to collaborate as a group and solve for an operation that would satisfy Δ for each equation. At first glance, I thought this was going to be a simple feat, considering my classmates’ and my own prior math knowledge and experience. However, after a lot of time pondering each other’s card, communicating with each, and (trying to) hold our frustration in, we still were left unable to solve for Δ! To our surprise, none of the three groups successfully completed the activity. This task, though frustrating and very difficult, was extremely fun and eye opening as a future educator. This is a potential activity that I could incorporate in my own classes to not only promote students’ problem-solving skills, but also to demonstrate the collaborative nature that can accompany solving math problems. Too often, I believe, people view math as an independent domain in which teamwork and cooperation with others is undermined. Students rarely see the benefits of working with others on mathematical dilemmas. Nonetheless, math is very much an interdependent field in which collaboration promotes extended learning. Activities such as Mystery Op support this claim that math classrooms benefit from different minds coming together.

In addition, it was advantageous to the learning of my peers and myself to take a look at the Ontario Mathematics I/S Curriculum documents and to read the first 28 pages. Not only did this introduce me to the curriculum and what it entails – which will help me in the future when reading this document more in depth – but it also gave me a better sense of why mathematics is such an important subject to learn. I can use this information in the future my referring back to it when I have reluctant students who may not always see the purpose in what I am teaching them. Furthermore, I now have a better understanding of the subject overview and the different courses that are offered at the secondary school level.

One question that I have for next class is how to be a stronger reflective practitioner in math. I have taken classes before that have emphasized reflecting on my own learning and that of others’. In fact, reflecting-on-practice seems to be a key theme in University courses and in the subsequent professions that follow. Thus, it would be helpful to go deeper and specify my reflective abilities to the domain of math and education. I feel that blogging about my experiences will be beneficial as it allows me to engage in such practices on (almost) a weekly basis.