One Step Ahead

Well Hello Catherine,
Good for you this week to get your post in ahead of me!  I am finding it quite challenging balancing 2 courses and my new school assignment, while attempting to be a good mom and wife (my husband is the one who lacks attention right now!)  Before I get into your new post, I just want to let you know that my school is a buzz with students engaging in different forms of research.  The Grade 4 and 5's are working on a graphing project and are busy collecting first hand data.  The Grade 5's are also in the planning stages of their heritage fair projects so they are googling, reading texts and asking experts.  I am enjoying their discussions because it parallels so nicely with our course.  It is really fun to be both a teacher and student!  The Grade 4's also told me today that when they research they have different ways to collect information so I am including their suggestions:  the radio, the environment, You Tube, museum, ask an expert.  Gee I wish I had these suggestions when I made our new polling question.  What an insightful group of young researchers!

I must admit that I enjoy reading our textbook because I find it clear and easy to follow.  I caught myself smiling at the technology section because like Dr. Cranton said, it is rather outdated even thought the text is not really that dated it does go to show how quickly technology changes.  I agree with you when you comment on the fact that the chapter does give many different sources for good resource tools.  I know that when I first entered the Masters program our friend Yvette showed me how to access ERIC and EBSCO.  This was very helpful. 

I too appreciated the simplified layout on pg. 47 and found it helped me when I had to post my topic and subtopics for this week.  I think I am catching on to how to create a research topic and then work within the guidelines.  It is funny, I never thought I would ever want to write a thesis but the more I look into inquiry based mathematics and the more direction I get from our course I become braver each day.  Who knows what I will decide in the end....

It is very helpful that this course will help support your learning in other courses.  I, like you, need to make the connection between theory and practice.  For my post this week I chose to look at "authentic" problem solving in math.  By authentic I mean real world problems that are engaging for students.  Looking into their interests and build word problems around these.  I firmly believe that this helps support engagement.

If you think of a new polling question, please let me know.  If there are any links that you want to add as you do your own research feel free to add them.  I think our blog page is looking very good and I am enjoying our chance to chat about the course and what we are learning.

Enjoy the weekend friend,
Sheila