And The Dialogue Halts...

Good Morning Friend,
I agree with your post on the challenges presented with this week's topic and assignment.  For me personally, I had to keep the Merriam text open when I was answering both questions.  I also printed off an example of a class mate's response to help keep me focused and on topic.  I liked my question about the use of math models but actually found that by looking at the 2 designs there were potentially many holes in my question.  So, I enjoyed the exercise because it made me find my flaws and have to think of ways around them.  Initially I wanted to explore whether the long term use of models through out schooling K into high school would make a difference.  This is something I am interested in investigating because I know that at your level (K-2) teachers really promote and engage students with models to help support student understanding.  I find as students progress in upper elementary teachers will do a brief introduction with models but move students too quickly into symbolic and will say things like "now only use the models if you have to!"

One of my good friends is a principal and her daughter struggled with math all through school.  One day Meaghan (the daughter) said to her mom "I wish my high school teacher would let me use manipulatives." She was in Grade 10 at the time.  I do find the intensity of model use decreases and I think there are many variables involved.

Thank you for always simplifying the concepts for me in your blogs.  I appreciate your direct, yet, easy to understand description.  Like you, I seem to do more descriptive research instead of quasi-experimental.  I found this chapter was very scientific in its design.  Maybe this is why I didn't really find it easy to read.

So I titled my blog this week the dialogue halts because in my group there is no real exchange happening.  It seems like everyone is nervous to post and once we get the reply from Dr. Cranton it comes as such a relief.  This is the first week of posting where we are not really interacting with each other.  I do miss the communication though...Usually I have 2 or 3 colleagues that will post immediately after Dr. Cranton puts our new discussion topic up and nobody posted until late Wednesday afternoon.  I guess no one wanted to take the chance of being the first to post in case they were not on the right track.

I do have some friends looking at our blog and voting on the polling question.   As a math person I am impressed with our number of views and hope we can make the 500 mark.  As you continue to do research for your other courses and come across links or articles you think are related just let me know and I will post them for us.

Wishing you a relaxing weekend - it seems as though my weekends feel busier than my weekdays!
Sheila