Final Blog Reflection

At the start of this program and at the start of this course, I was definitely unsure if I had what it takes to be a teacher. However, I feel I've grown some confidence in myself throughout the semester. One article that stuck out to me was the one about being a reflective teacher and how things won't go right the first, second, third, or tenth time (or so on) teaching, and that's ok as long as we don't give up and learn from it. I've kept in mind to being reflective about situations that occur that I've even started up a journal for myself to record incidents that happened (during my practicum school visits) that didn't go as well as I had hoped. I use it to reflect back on what happened and how I could have handled it better for next time. 

Other things I thought were interesting and I took away was the topic of marks and grades on students' learning in school. As a student myself, I always knew grades and marks gave students a lot of stress and took the fun out of learning, so the idea of removing marks and changing up how students are assessed was a very entertaining idea, especially how it links with my inquiry project on the Thinking Classroom. The inquiry project was a great way to delve deeper into a teaching method/idea that I was interested in and I would not have had the chance to witness it firsthand and gotten real world feedback on it without this course to open up the opportunity. Being able to learn more about the Thinking Classroom, I will definitely be incorporating it into my own teaching to try and see how it goes. 

Thank you for the fun experiences throughout the course and happy holidays!

Inquiry 1 Project Reflection

Before this inquiry project, my only exposure to the Thinking Classroom was very surface level and I'd mainly only heard the term floating around without knowing a lot of details about it. Hence, I thought the inquiry project was a great way to research and learn more about it. I was able to read Peter Liljedahl's book, Building Thinking Classrooms, and learn that there was so much more to the idea of Thinking Classrooms than just working in groups at whiteboards. 

I liked the real world contact aspect of the project because although reading about the Thinking Classroom can give a lot of information and insight, being able to experience it in-person gave a more personal and fresh perspective into how the theory plays out in a real life setting. Since the Thinking Classroom is made to be a framework and not something to copy exactly as written, it was really interesting to learn about the similarities and differences on how different teachers implemented and/or modified the ideas written by Peter Liljedahl. One aspect I found that was very different (but very fascinating) from a traditional math classroom was the assessments in a Thinking Classroom. Perhaps I'll look deeper into assessments and assessment styles in my Inquiry 2 project. 

Additionally, simply from reading about the Thinking Classroom and the reasoning and research behind it, I really liked the concept of a Thinking Classroom, and I also thought it was a fun way to approach math teaching and learning. Thus, I was very surprised by the number of negative responses by students towards the Thinking Classroom implementation. After delving into students' reasoning on why, many of them responded that it was because this style of teaching did not provide them with notes that they could use to study from/with. However, Liljedahl mentions not providing students with notes from the teacher because it causes students to mimic rather than think for themselves, which I agree with. What I'm curious about is that even though the teacher didn't provide notes for the students, given the students are doing many problems each class on the whiteboards, couldn't they write notes from those problems they solved? I discussed the issue about notes with a teacher running a Thinking Classroom and we agreed that students seem to struggle with writing their own (effective) notes (or even knowing that they should be writing their own notes). I'm curious to see if students' opinions will change if they learned how to take notes on their own - maybe using Liljedahl's graphic organizer idea for note-taking will be a useful idea to teach students. 

Overall, I hope to research and learn more in the next Inquiry 2 project!

Inquiry Project: Annotated Bibliography

 The annotated bibliography for our Thinking Classrooms inquiry project:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AIqcpbQFypMXOFZ9UTqpOalR-2Db8lM1EkXA-3Q74kA/edit?usp=sharing 

Exit Slip: Inquiry Project Update (09Nov23)

During class on November 9, Jacky and I spent most of the time finding academic articles on or related to Thinking Classrooms. Jacky focused on the works of Peter Liljedahl and he also previously found (informal) critiques of the Thinking Classrooms approach on various teachers' blogs. As for me, I found some articles written by others that were relevant to the idea of Thinking Classrooms - collaborative learning/activities, mathematical thinking and vertical whiteboard teaching method. 

We also discussed about our three concepts and decided to change one of them (A) because we realized it was very dependent on getting student feedback and not from academic articles so we changed it to influences that brought about the creation of the Thinking Classrooms framework. 

We discussed about visiting and seeing Takuya (Christine's SA) and Max to witness and get more input on Thinking Classrooms and their implementation of it in their classrooms. Plus, we wanted to get student feedback on how they felt about it. 

Exit Slip: Alfie Kohn

During the discussion on October 19th, I was really interested in the video where Alfie Kohn discussed how "grades should not exist" because of its many detriments to students' learning. I agree and think that grades bring more harm to students' learnings than good because students become so fixated on their grades than their learning. I do understand that grades are used as a motivator for students to study, do assignments, etc., but the heavy emphasis on grades makes it feel like that's the only goal rather than the learning. Furthermore, sometimes students take grades so seriously that they make it a part of who they are and have the mentality that it represents them, but it doesn't. As a future teacher, I hope to incorporate more assessments in my classroom that are less focused on grades and more on seeing if students understand/know a specific skill/competency. Descriptive comments/feedback would be more informative than a simple mark on a quiz/test/assignment. 

The other topic we discussed was competition vs. co-operation. Personally, I enjoy co-operation type games more, but I do get where others were coming from on how a completely co-operation approach is a very utopian mindset. Plus, I do understand how competition can have its benefits because it does provide motivation. I liked the idea of playing a competitive game but making it more low-stakes/fun so it's more about the enjoyment and connections built than about winning/beating others. It reminded me of how in high school, my friends and I would play Monopoly together and we joke about how it's a "game that ends friendships" but we play it very casually and make jokes when we lose and/or take others' money, etc. Incorporating that mentality when playing games/activities in a classroom would make the classroom environment a very welcoming one for students. 

Inquiry Project Idea: Thinking Classrooms

Jacky and I will be working on this Inquiry project together! :) 

Why Thinking Classrooms? 

I've volunteered in math classrooms at my old high school, and in one of those classes, the teacher actually had an interesting and fun way of giving her lessons and teaching math. She had white boards set up around the room, and after teaching a brief lesson, she'd have students try doing problems in groups on the boards. I really enjoyed witnessing the interactivity and collaborative environment. When I asked her about her ideas, she introduced me to Peter Liljedahl's Building Thinking Classrooms book. Ever since learning about it, I've been extremely curious about Thinking Classrooms, if other teachers have used it, how they've implemented it, its effects on students, and so forth. I think the Inquiry 1 project will be extremely helpful in researching further about it.

Entrance Slip: Effects of Grades and Marks on Learning (Option 2)

As someone who recently finished undergrad and immediately jumped into the Education program, the jump from having grades and exams to a pass/fail system was very liberating. I agree with the key findings of the article, especially that "tests and grades cause significant stress for students" (p. 5). Exams were always a major source of stress for me and whenever I studied for exams, more often than not, it felt like I was cramming and memorizing as much information for the exam, only to forget it right after, so learning was not fun and a lot of it was not retained. 

A funny coincidence but I recently watched a TEDx Talk by Mark Rober that also touched on a "points" system in a game experiment and how its role affected people's learning. The fear of losing points and getting a low score significantly reduced people's attempts at the problem as well as their learning/success rates. I thought that this was really similar to how grades/marks affect students' learning in school. The fear of doing something wrong and getting a low score restricts students' creativity, their curiosity to try new things and explore different ideas. Therefore, the intrinsic motivation to learn and try new things is lost because of the idea that grades are most important so it's best to stick to what's known: the simple formula/method to get the right answer so they can get a good grade.

I think some assessment is good to assess what level students' understandings are at and where their strengths and weaknesses lie so they can find where they could focus their attention on to improve. However, I feel a lot of times, the grades system simply ranks students and makes them feel like that is their worth when really, it's so much more than what grade they get on a test, but how much they've persevered and grown as a whole. Maybe it would help to ease the worry about grades a little if students could have many fun and creative mini problem solving activities that weren't for marks but simply kept for assessing progress over time. In this way, students can also take part in discussing their grade (if a grade is needed) for each unit by referring back to their portfolio of work, what they've learned, areas of improvement and their growth throughout.