Webinar Week: Math Post Week 4

©Patricia McEachren 2016. Rich Task. 

This week in class we discussed differentiated instruction. This was the perfect topic for class as it was my week to do my webinar. The resources from class were very beneficial as we were able to use them in our presentation. In our webinar we discussed the importance to knowing student readiness through assessment for learning with diagnostic and formative assessment. Then, we explained that once we knew student readiness we could determine which tasks to use in our classroom based on student’s needs. We wanted to make sure that our group members understood that there are many different learning preferences and using activities based on the types of learners in your classroom was very important. On our handout we listed a variety of options for differentiating learning such as group work, use of technology, varied directions, modelling among many others. We also gave lists on how to differentiate the product, content and environment. 

The three major ways we demonstrated differentiation in math specifically were parallel tasks, open-ended questions and rich tasks. We made sure to discuss the characteristics of each activity and how they were inclusive of all students. I think the examples we used were very helpful and after each example we made sure to discuss it with the group and identify the different strategies that were used. To close our webinar we provided the group a simple question and asked them to make it into a rich task. This gave us a chance to see if our group members were able to apply what we had just taught them and we seemed to be successful. We also had them do a google form as an exit ticket. We wanted to get feedback from the group and the exit ticket acted as that feedback. Finally, we provided them resources we felt were really informative so they could reference them in the future. 

This week we also watched the above video which talked about collaboration in math. The video talks about a study that showed students in Berkley math were failing when they worked alone. The students that were successful were students who went to study groups, discussed math and collaborated on their homework. Creating a support network in class is very important. We encourage collaboration in so many other subjects and I think it should be encouraged more in math. Often, the perception is that math is a solo subject when in fact students do better when they have each other to work with. Talking about math also means students will share their ideas and discuss their reasoning for choosing a specific pathway. Reasoning was also discussed in a video this week as an important skill for students to have.