Oct 3 - Exit Slip
Today's lesson, as well as the discussion of "head, heart, hands", reminded me of something I encountered in a reading for another class.
The reading was discussing Indigenous Teachers and Learners in Australia. The quote was:
What strikes me about this quote is that it challenges the model of education that has subjects taught and assessed separately. This is the norm in Western Secondary institutions, but it's not the norm everywhere. Primary school is taught by a single teacher covering many subject areas simultaneously. And the speaker in the quote, an indigenous educator, is saying that some indigenous people model their education as a single explorative subject.
As math teachers, we are often confronted with the "How do we get students to do hands-on work?" "How do we get them feeling and exploring in our classroom when all we have is numbers?"
An exercise like we did with rope making is a great example of how we can make them use head, heart, and hands. It's cross-curricular and engaging.
Math is present in so much of our lives that it doesn't really make sense to say "You should only teach math in a math classroom." There's math in music, there's math in writing, there's math in nature, there's math in physical activity. I think that teachers shouldn't be afraid to break that cross-curricular barrier. And that would open the door to so many hands-on experiments and class activities.
The reading was discussing Indigenous Teachers and Learners in Australia. The quote was:
"… western teaching and learning is very compartmentalized. It’s very boxed and it has to fit. […] We don’t fit into a box. We’re surrounding the box. We’re part of the box. We’re inside the box. We’re all over the box. We’re like the air, we’re all around. …White teachers don’t see that."Santoro, N., Reid, J., Crawford, L., & Simpson, L. (2011). Teaching Indigenous Children: Listening To And Learning From Indigenous Teachers. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 36(10). http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2011v36n10.2
What strikes me about this quote is that it challenges the model of education that has subjects taught and assessed separately. This is the norm in Western Secondary institutions, but it's not the norm everywhere. Primary school is taught by a single teacher covering many subject areas simultaneously. And the speaker in the quote, an indigenous educator, is saying that some indigenous people model their education as a single explorative subject.
As math teachers, we are often confronted with the "How do we get students to do hands-on work?" "How do we get them feeling and exploring in our classroom when all we have is numbers?"
An exercise like we did with rope making is a great example of how we can make them use head, heart, and hands. It's cross-curricular and engaging.
Math is present in so much of our lives that it doesn't really make sense to say "You should only teach math in a math classroom." There's math in music, there's math in writing, there's math in nature, there's math in physical activity. I think that teachers shouldn't be afraid to break that cross-curricular barrier. And that would open the door to so many hands-on experiments and class activities.
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