Thoughts on Introduction and Video
This week I appreciated the connection to outdoor learning as a way in which teaching math can happen. I feel lucky that all the school sites that I have worked at have easy access to both beaches and forests. This had me thinking that this is not the reality for all educators. Some educators teach at sites in busy city centres and others in places where natural landscapes are covered by snow for some of the year. I think teaching math using the outdoors becomes powerful when it is a routine and a way of thinking about math and not just an experience that happens occasionally. I wonder how this experience can be brought to areas where nature access is limiting.
Mathematics outdoors has many possibilities. Including connecting leaners to place and helping build self-confidence with body movements. Just this week The Canadian Paediatric Society published a report stating the benefits of risky play in children’s development (click here to see report). I think this provides a great opportunity for educators to reference research when helping all families understand why this is a meaningful way of learning.
I was amazed at the talent represented in the Dancing Euclidean Proofs. However, as I am not a dancer, I started to think about myself as a learner and how being asked to create a similar project would be challenging for myself. This made me think about allowing students to represent their knowledge in multiple ways and allowing choice, a key idea in UDL. I think it’s important to build students awareness of movement as a way of showing knowledge, however, I see that this mode of learning will be meaningful for some learners but not all.
Weekly Reading
This week I read Dancing Teachers Into being with a Garden, or How to Swing or Parkour the Strict Grid of Schooling written by Susan Gerofsky and Julia Ostertag. This article looked at how intertwined the grid system is into teaching and everyday life. Examples included the Teacher Education building at UBC to checklists used. A connection was made between how the grid system has been used in history as a powerful tool or territoriality and colonialism (Gerofsky & Ostertag, 2018). The authors suggest that the grid system is used so much as it is familiar, comforting, and powerful. The article moves on to discussing ways to think about teaching more creatively using dance movements and school gardens.
One of my stops while reading this article was over the idea of the grid system as a way of control. When I was a student the education system was teacher directed now, depending on the educator, schooling can be student-centered. I think one way to move away from the use of grids is to view educators from a student-centered point of view and the educators as an equal learner alongside students. With this change learning becomes organic and open-ended rather than rigid and scripted to check boxes.
My second stop was related to the author discussing teacher education programs, specifically when the article mentioned conforming to traditional teaching within the grid or imagining other ways teaching could be possible. This made me think about how when I was in the teacher education program there was a core math course that did not encompass any ideas around teaching math outdoors or through movement. As this was within the last 5 years I wonder if much has changed. How can we create change within a system of education, and traditional math approaches to be different when training programs for educators do not expose them to diverse ways of knowing.
Sit Spot Activity
Sit spots is an activity I do regularly with my students. I was excited to see what they were drawn to regarding lines. I took my class to the school garden and had them sketch living and human made objects they could see. We then had a discussion regarding lines as angles does not come into the curriculum yet. Most students found numerous examples of straight lines. This made me think back to my weekly reading this week and how grid like the school structure and garden are.
As for experiencing angles using body movement. I had my class go to the field and form shapes by all holding hands. Students moved into the shapes of a circle, triangle, rectangle, and square. By making shapes students were experiencing what different angles look like.
References
Gerofsky, S. & Ostertag, J. (2018). Dancing teachers into being with a garden, or how to swing or parkour the strict grid of schooling. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 34/2, 172-188.
Thanks for sharing the connection to The Canadian Paediatric Society’s report, a timely find for our current course.
ReplyDeleteYour summary and response to Dancing Teachers Into being with a Garden, or How to Swing or Parkour the Strict Grid of Schooling was intriguing - how widespread and rooted in the grid system are we? This is something I have not considered to this extent. It reminds of an article I read for another course, Barbara Adams Time, in which the impacts of the clock are examined.
In response to your stop, “This made me think about how when I was in the teacher education program there was a core math course that did not encompass any ideas around teaching math outdoors or through movement. As this was within the last 5 years I wonder if much has changed.” I’m often surprised to learn how many teacher education programs don’t even include a math pedagogy course of any kind. Or if they do then it’s an elective. As you mention, some of those that do are still offering a traditional view of mathematics.
I decided to take a look at Acadia’s course offerings to see if I could find the course I took about 15 years ago (mine focused on making math engaging, hands-on, and visual). It looks like the descriptions, “develop discovery activities” may provide an opening for pedagogies like nature or outdoor education.
"EDUC 4173 Teaching Mathematics in Elementary School 1
This course addresses how elementary students become mathematically literate. The focus is on relevant documents and researchinformed methods for teaching mathematics to elementary students. Pre-service teachers develop discovery activities and explore how
elementary students think about and learn mathematics. Practices for teaching children to reason, to solve problems employing a
variety of strategies, and to communicate mathematically are addressed."
(Source: https://registrar.acadiau.ca/files/sites/registrar/pdfs/Academic_Calendars/calendar_final_2023-2024v2.pdf )
Perhaps one way is to move a graduate level course like 553 to the BEd program. We don’t seem to have access to these until a MEd program. I find it to be similar to my BSc in Mathematics in which all the fun and interesting math courses, like Graph Theory and Cryptography, were only offered in year four.
Hi Amanda,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the share. I took an early childhood learning course as an elective, and did my final paper on "risky play". CBC's the Nature of Things had an episode on The Power of Play that had some great arguments. It's available on the UBC library, and here's a link to the episode's notes. https://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features/risky-play-for-children-why-we-should-let-kids-go-outside-and-then-get-out
My favourite suggestion is the 17 second rule. If the child (student or your own) is climbing too high or doing something deemed risky, take a breath and wait 17 seconds to see how they react.