Standard #3: Learning Environments
Artifact #1: Scavenger Hunt
Performance 3(b): Develops learning experiences that engage learners in collaborative and self-directed learning and that extend learner interaction with ideas and people locally and globally.
Description: As a review activity, students in my geometry classes work as a group on an outdoor scavenger hunt. They are given a picture of a location on campus and at that location they are given a problem to work out as a group. Once they complete that problem correctly, they are shown the next location. The team that gets back first earned bonus points on their exam, but every team that completes the scavenger hunt also received points. This activity engaged them, because it was a game, but also motivated them to work together to solve challenging math problems, using their notebooks, textbooks, and other resources available to them to find the correct solution.
Rationale: This fulfills this standard because students were working as a group to find locations and work through a problem together. The types of problems they were solving were all related to things they would work through in a real-life situation. For example, one of the questions had to do with finding out how many scoops of ice cream were in one serving given the serving size in ounces and the dimensions of the ice cream scoop in inches. Students had to work collaboratively to use the resources available to them to solve these challenging real-world problems.
Performance 3(b): Develops learning experiences that engage learners in collaborative and self-directed learning and that extend learner interaction with ideas and people locally and globally.
Description: As a review activity, students in my geometry classes work as a group on an outdoor scavenger hunt. They are given a picture of a location on campus and at that location they are given a problem to work out as a group. Once they complete that problem correctly, they are shown the next location. The team that gets back first earned bonus points on their exam, but every team that completes the scavenger hunt also received points. This activity engaged them, because it was a game, but also motivated them to work together to solve challenging math problems, using their notebooks, textbooks, and other resources available to them to find the correct solution.
Rationale: This fulfills this standard because students were working as a group to find locations and work through a problem together. The types of problems they were solving were all related to things they would work through in a real-life situation. For example, one of the questions had to do with finding out how many scoops of ice cream were in one serving given the serving size in ounces and the dimensions of the ice cream scoop in inches. Students had to work collaboratively to use the resources available to them to solve these challenging real-world problems.
Artifact #2: Logarithm Book
Essential Knowledge 3(i): Understands the relationship between motivation and engagement and knows how to design learning experiences using strategies that build learner self direction and ownership of learning.
Description: This was one of the summative assessments in a chapter on logarithmic functions. Students created a reference book on the properties and applications of logarithms. They were reviewing the important aspects of logarithms before wrapping up the chapter with a final test. The book was supposed to be written so that another person coming into the class having no knowledge of what this chapter was about, but knew all of the information up to where the class had been before this chapter, would be able to read it and understand what we'd been studying.
Rationale: This fulfills this standard because students were creating a reference book that they felt like would help another student be successful in this class for this chapter. In reality, though, students were designing a book that would help students like themselves be successful in this chapter. They were designing a book that would teach students that learn and think in similar ways as they do themselves. They then shared these books with their classmates. This project provided students with a lot of ownership, they took ownership for the content by finding ways to explain the content in a way that made sense to them, and they took ownership over the actual creation of their book.
Essential Knowledge 3(i): Understands the relationship between motivation and engagement and knows how to design learning experiences using strategies that build learner self direction and ownership of learning.
Description: This was one of the summative assessments in a chapter on logarithmic functions. Students created a reference book on the properties and applications of logarithms. They were reviewing the important aspects of logarithms before wrapping up the chapter with a final test. The book was supposed to be written so that another person coming into the class having no knowledge of what this chapter was about, but knew all of the information up to where the class had been before this chapter, would be able to read it and understand what we'd been studying.
Rationale: This fulfills this standard because students were creating a reference book that they felt like would help another student be successful in this class for this chapter. In reality, though, students were designing a book that would help students like themselves be successful in this chapter. They were designing a book that would teach students that learn and think in similar ways as they do themselves. They then shared these books with their classmates. This project provided students with a lot of ownership, they took ownership for the content by finding ways to explain the content in a way that made sense to them, and they took ownership over the actual creation of their book.