Exit slip (Oct.23) - Gender Stereotypes of Scientists

In today's class, one of our topics was about gender stereotypes of scientists. As an Asian female student who studied Pure and Applied Science in college and Mathematics in university in Canada, I never heard or felt any stereotypes around me in these schools, or I may be not sensitive to it. I could recall that girls performed as good as boys in STEM courses. So I think the root of gender stereotypes mainly come from families. 

Few days ago, my sons' teacher asked her students during the zoom morning meeting "what the favorite type of book do you like to read?" Almost all boys answered Science and almost no girl chose Science. When parents choose books or toys for their children, their gender stereotypical expectation will likely affect their children's subject preference. It is not always true that girls want to play with Barbie dolls and boys want to play with toy cars. Teachers, especially elementary teachers, could use all kind of activities to stimulate students' interest in different subjects. There is no "Male" subject or "female" subject. Every student could pursue their favorite one. 

I think we should not expect equal numbers of females and males in a specific subject as long as they are provided equal opportunity in education, so less females taking STEM could be also normal. I personally will celebrate the day when we do not need to emphasize "Female" identity in a matter but discuss the issue regardless of gender and sexual orientation.  

Entrance slip (Oct. 21): Van Manen reading on the tact of teaching — reading and response

At the beginning of this article, author lists many questions that teachers may pose. I was soon attracted by these words because I really wanted to know the answers to all of these questions. However, due to different circumstances there should not be a certain answer to each question. The author provides us principles and concepts in the article to help us deal with various situations. I will choose three quotes from the article to share with you in this blog post.  

"Pedagogy is the ability of actively distinguishing what is “good” from what is not good, what is appropriate from what is less appropriate in interacting with children or young people. The task of teaching cannot be properly understood unless we are willing to conceive of practical teacher knowledge in a pedagogical manner."(P. 4)

Author uses the negative consequences of praising students to remind teachers about pedagogical sensitivity. Teacher's pedagogical sensitivity could protect students from embarrassment, confusion or stress. To develop this ability, I think teachers should constantly reflect on the events and the situations that they interact with the students they teach, and ask themselves the pedagogical question: did I act appropriately? 

"The concept of the teacher as a reflective practitioner is, in part, a response to the sense that a technical theory into practice epistemology does not seem sensitive to the realization that teacher practical knowledge must play an active and dynamic role in the ever-changing challenges of the school and classroom." (p. 10) 

I am inspired from this quote. As teacher candidates, we could accumulate practical knowledge through reflective practice. We need to constantly reflect on our own actions and experiences. We are provided many opportunities to develop our reflective practices in this program. Through microteaching, I gained valuable online teaching experiences. I reflected on how different the teaching and presenting are. In short, we need to be a reflective practitioner.

"Oakeshott (1962) distinguishes between technical knowledge that can be captured in written text and practical knowledge that can only be expressed in action and learned through experience." (p. 17) 

No matter how many case studies we analyze and learn in the class, practical knowledge can only be learned through experience. During the two weeks practicum, I will try to be an active and reflective practitioner.

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Set 16, 2021

Reading: Pedagogical Sensitivity and Teachers Practical Knowing-in-Action

Highlights from the article:

1. Giving recognition may lead to feelings of inequality. (So, be careful to give the praise to a single student in public. Some teachers like to say "good question!" I always think this is an inappropriate compliment. Some students may be worried to ask a question since they don't know if it is a good one. If there are good questions, there must be bad questions. Therefore, teachers should just need to simply say "thank you" and answer that question carefully.)

2. The caring involves helping, encouraging, admonishing, praising, prodding, and worrying about individual students and classes. (This means teachers should care their students "as persons who have names and personalities and with whom they have concrete interactions.")

3. What we need to have to develop certain qualities or traits of character includes open-mindedness, sincerity, wholehearted, absorbed interests, responsibility, a habit of thinking in a reflective way, and so forth. 

4. A good teacher is able to read, as it were, the inner life of the young person; the tactful teacher knows how to interpret the deeper significance of shyness, frustration, interest, difficulty, tenderness, humor, discipline in concrete situations with particular children or groups of children; the tactful teacher have a fine sense of standards, limits, and balance that makes it possible to know almost automatically how far to enter into a situation and what distance to keep in individual circumstances; a tactful teacher seems to have the ability of instantly sensing what is the appropriate, right or good thing to do on the basis of perceptive pedagogical understanding of children's individual nature and circumstances. 

I am attracted by a depiction of a tactful teacher on page 17. The author says, "this teacher feels at home in this room, in a way that allows her to act with such confidence and self-forgetful ease." I believe that this is the condition that all teachers want to reach. Can this teacher still behave like this in a new school facing a new group of students? What and how should this teacher do? I really want to know what the first thing she will do in a completely new environment. But there is one word that impressed me, forgetful. "That teacher can forget herself and completely absorb herself in this situation with her students." Yes, focus, focus on my job. Always remember why I am here in this classroom. 

Additional Entrance slip: Inquiry project

1.      Define your question Your topic should be fairly specific	Search Topic: How to create a positive learning environment? What factors will affect on creating a positive and productive learning environment?
2.      Analyze your topic into concepts Usually 2 or 3 concepts give the best results	Concept A	Concept B	Concept C
	Being a positive role model for students	Developing trust, trust is the fundamental to any relationship	Equality and Equity

When I was 12 years old, I was transferred to a new school. In this new class, I soon became engaged in a positive learning environment. During the recess time or after school, we were playing all kind of games, we even invented games. We were learning from each other, helped each other, and encourage each other. Most of the time, during the last block of the day we could organize activities by ourselves without the teacher in the classroom. Everyone in the classroom felt comfortable and happy, and most importantly, we all enjoyed learning. We were the best friends to each other. No one was left behind. I felt great because I thought I was popular in the classroom. In fact, everyone was popular in the classroom. It was so amazing, and even now, I think it is miracle. Because I was transferred to this class at Grade 6, I did not witness how this positive learning environment was created by teachers at the very beginning. I realized how important a positive and productive learning environment is for every student. So, I choose this topic as my inquiry question. I hope every student could have an amazing learning experience in the school.

Exit slip (Oct. 15)

Here are my thoughts on some interesting topics discussed in today's class:

1.   What kind of society we want and how it related to our schooling

           I think that we all want a society as Osborne says in his book "Education and Schooling" that " a society where everyone could pursue their own interests without trespassing on the rights of others" and citizens have "a range of knowledges, a capacity for thought and reflection, an ability to listen and debate, a respect for reason and justice, a reasoned (though not unconditional) respect for the beliefs and values of others, a disposition to participate in public life, and the skills needed to apply these principles to specific cases and to live with the ambiguities and contradictions that may arise."( p.32) Teacher should be a role model for our students. So the first thing to do is to think about what kind of person we want to be and how to be that kind of person. 

2.    Don't trust calculator, use mental Math.

I agree with this point. I think the classmate who gave this statement means that people should not completely rely on machines, and we should use the power of our brain more. Nowadays, our lives are full of all kinds of machines. It is hard to image how our lives will become if without cars or mobile phones. Back to classroom, if students rely so much on calculators for basic mathematics calculations they will gradually lose the ability to do arithmetic operations, and probably number sense and estimation skills. Some calculators have strong functions which can do many fundamental operations. For example, students can simply enter an equation in the calculator for the answer instead of memorizing multiplication table. But what can they do if they don't carry a calculator with them in the real life? So I think we need to encourage students using mental Math and using pen and paper for calculation as much as possible. 

3.    Can tests accurately reflect student ability

          I think tests can not, but assessments can, because test is just one of the methods of assessments.  Using multiple methods on assessment is always a good choice to avoid unfairness. Teachers should not rely on single method to reflect their student's achievement. Tests could only reflect a part of student's learning outcomes. Projects, assignments, in-class activities can all be used to assess student's learning progress.             

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Sep 13, 2021

Paper and string are very handy materials that can be used in math class to teach various math subjects.  

This book introduces many origami activities. For example, activity 6 is folding a parabola. This can be used in a pre-calculus 11 class when teaching quadratic functions.

A classmate, Ivan, introduced an Indonesian traditional making craft -- Batik. This reminds me of making keychains with plastic lace when I was in elementary school. I learned it from my classmates. 

When we were making these little things, we needed to design their patterns in terms of shape, color, and size. It somehow developed our math skills and creativity. 

Entrance slip ( Oct. 14 ): Marks, grades and their effects in schooling

Before students are able to self-assess their learning outcomes, most of them will rely on grades to understand their process and results of learning. Percentage or letter grades give students direct information for their self-evaluation. Sometimes, grades could provide students incentives to learn. 

However, percentage or letter grades alone are not enough to be a strong feedback. Students should know what activities need to undertake to improve or maintain their learning status. Grades should serve to learn and teach, but not to discourage students or be used by students to compete against each other.

I agree with author's statement that teachers should focus on learning instead of trying to push and control students with rewards or threats of grades.(p. 9)  Teachers have the responsibility to "move towards an environment in which learning is seen as an end in itself and feelings of competence are found through personal improvement."(p. 8) Many students struggle with test anxiety, perhaps because they or their parents value good grads so highly. If students don't have the freedom to decide what the grades can bring to them,  how can they improve and grow. Teachers should comfort those students who get bad grades, and teach them how to "transform the use of tests and grades from judgmental and unfair to informational and helpful to the learning process."(p.8) Teachers should also help students develop self-assessment skills, then students could rely less on the grades for self-evaluation.

If mathematics is taught without giving grades, I think teacher should consider how to use multiple methods to provide feedbacks to the students. One-to-one conversations between teacher and students is always my first choice. In the one-to-one conversation, teacher could provide student targeted feedback. Without giving grades, students would feel less pressure from the tests or quizzes. But for some students, they may lose motivation to learn. As a conclusion, since it is very important to use multiple assessment methods to meet the needs of diverse learners, grading as a traditional method of evaluation should not be abandoned. 

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Sep 5, 2021

Articles:

Refocusing our efforts: A shift from grading to an emphasis on learning

If students' motivation to learn relies on achieving certain grades, I think we may use grading in the wrong way or we mislead the purpose of the grading to the students. We do hope to cultivate students' intrinsic motivation of learning, then what can grading help here? Or, I could change the question to how can we use extrinsic motivators to cultivate intrinsic motivation? Once students have the intrinsic motivation to learn, they will not be distracted by the value of grades or any other external incentives. In this article, 34 students are invited to participate in their study. I deeply feel that students' demands vary tremendously from one to another.  However, we still can see that the majority of students enjoyed choosing a topic that was of interest to them and working together. As teachers, it would be helpful to add informative comments beside the grades in order to let students focus on learning rather than comparing grades.

After reading this article, I am going to find the answers to below three questions:

1. How to give our students choice about learning topics during their learning journey?

2. How to use extrinsic motivators to cultivate intrinsic motivation?

3. Which and why certain learning activities should be graded? (before we are thinking about how to take off giving grades, we need to truly understand the use of grading first.)

In the article, suggestions are given:

- Ryan and Deci (2000) argue that if those external rewards are used to control students and diminish autonomy, then they decrease intrinsic motivation.

-First, in order for a student to internalize and accept the value of uninteresting tasks, she needs to experience relatedness and connectedness. The tasks should be modeled or valued by others, such as peers, teachers, or parents, to whom the student has an

attachment. Second, the student must experience perceived competence. The tasks must be within the student's current level of ability and skill. Third, the student must feel "freedom from excessive external pressure toward behaving or thinking a certain way" (Ryan & Deci, 2000, p. 74). In other words, the student must possess a feeling of autonomy or a sense of choice.

 

Province-wide Professional Development Day (Friday Oct 23)

I signed up for the level Grade 6 - 12. The conference will be on Oct 23, Keynote Presentation: 8:45-9:30 am.

Exit Slip ( Oct. 8)---Relationship between making, doing, moving and learning math & science

  

In today's class, I learned how to made rope and multi strand braid. I feel it was very interesting, and enjoyed very much. At the same time, I can feel the connections between learning Math or science and crafts. How energy is transformed in the rope structures and what the pattern is in the braid, these things inspired me that the embodied way of teaching and learning could contribute to deeper understanding of knowledge. 

For the video of building bridge, I was touched by the scene in which people worked together for an meaningful annual bridge-building activity. Children could also learn a lot from this traditional craft activity. Meanwhile, community members were all bound together. That's very meaningful.

All groups in the class gave many examples of connections between teaching and learning Math or Science and making crafts. We believe embodied learning could foster children's critical thinking, make particular concepts easier to be remembered, and build connections to each others. It is helpful to apply this idea into our day to day classroom teaching environment. 

Entrance slip (Oct. 8)-- More than learning

I believe bodily experience is helpful in learning aspects of mathematics and physics, especially when helping students building interest and cognition at early stages.

Maybe all of us had learning counting numbers and addition using our own fingers when we first time in contact with the concept of basic mathematics. We can feel gravity, inertia and friction force every day. In elemental school and secondary school, teacher are using colorful and distinguishable shaped objects like beads, wooden bricks, and marbles to teach basic mathematic. It may be hard to explain physic law of gravity and air friction force. While when a student dropping an iron ball and a feather from each hand to ground, he can understand these concepts easily.

Dr. Borden’s article on birch bark biting lesson shows us that besides the cognitive advantage and inspiring of interest that bodily experience can provide, combining it with indigenous traditional art crafting can also serve the purpose of culture affirmation and social justice. This help counter “the marginalization of Mi’kmaw youth from mathematics” (Borden, P757). By “pull mathematics into indigenous culture” using bodily experience, student can learn and gain value more than just the knowledge alone, which is marvelous.

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August 18, 2021

References:

1) Experiencing Meanings in Geometry

2) Proceedings of the Eighth International Mathematics Education and Society Conference

Some quotes from the first article:

1. Mathematics is actually an aesthetic subject almost entirely. 

2. Mathematics is a natural and deep part of human experience and experiences of meaning in mathematics should be accessible to everyone.

3. why and how are these meanings related? This is a why-question...

After reading this article, I feel that there are still many aspects of mathematics to explore. I like drawing since I was 5 years old. Maybe it is why I loved geometry courses when I was in high school. I enjoyed drawing those circles and lines neatly and accurately when doing assignments. I somehow felt a little sense of aesthetic in it. 

I do believe there is a close relationship between mathematics and arts. It would be very interesting to integrate arts into math teaching in the classroom.

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Professor Gerofsky teaches us Rope Making in a video(she also taught us about this in one class in the 2020 fall term). When she is twisting the grass and say that there is a lot of stored energy in the grass, I am kind of attracted. I remember when I was young my mom taught me about something similar to Rope Making. I believe I can do this type of job all day long since this ancient activity brings me some sense of peace and deja vu.

There is another very interesting video that is about dancing combinatorics. For example, the left arm does a sequence of 11, and the right arm does a sequence of 13, then a whole cycle includes 143 (11x13) different movements. A simple example is the left arm does a sequence of 3 (up, middle, down), the right arm does a sequence of 2 (up, down), then there are 6 combinations (up-up, middle-down, down-up, up-down, middle-up, down-down). 

An interesting problem here is that it is better to choose numbers that are relatively prime numbers so that your movements will not repeat somewhere in the middle. Relatively prime means these numbers don't have common factors except 1. For example, 4 and 5 are relatively prime numbers, but 4 and 6 are not because 4 and 6 have 2 as the common factor. 

If we choose, for example, 6 and 4, then the sequence will start to repeat at 13, because 4 is the factor of 12 which is the multiple of 6. The whole cycle ideally is supposed to include 24 different movements, but now you suddenly realize that it starts to repeat after the 12th movement.  

So we may know that for two or any number of non-relatively prime numbers the sequence will start to repeat at their least common multiple. For example, for 8 and 6, the sequence will start to repeat after the 24th movement.  

There are many valuable and inspiring videos on this website. 

Exit slip (Oct 1st)----Group Discussion on Renert article

How might you connect with your students around these difficult realities of our world in ways that are healing, problem-solving, beneficial..?

I have some thoughts on above question I would like to talk a bit more about it. 

I would actively connect with my students to our world from positive side in most of time. I would also like to engage students in brainstorming and discussion only about those global issues they raised. I believe that when we love something we will care about it, and we will try to protect it. Students, especially high school students, pay close attention to what happening in the world. They would love to talk with teachers about those global issues in a safe and friendly learning environment, and they have a whole bunch of questions to ask. If I could build a great relationship with students, I believe I have a lot of opportunities to discuss with them about these difficult realities of our world. But I think in my deep heart that firstly I want them to believe this world is full of beauty, and is worth them to " fight " for (to be responsible for those world's problems) in the future.  

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Some useful websites and resources: 

CBCLisen

TEDSummit - How Trees Talk to Each Other - Suzanne Simard

Here are some thoughts after watching Dr. Suzanne Simard's TED Talk on the topic of  How Trees Talk to Each Other. 

I do believe that plants can communicate in a way that we don't understand yet. Plants like animals are living things. Some of them can even hunt and eat food, such as Venus flytraps. So it is no surprise that someone claims that trees talk to each other by their roots. In 1968, Backster used a lie detector proving that plants can communicate telepathically. Probably, plants can communicate using multiple ways. Using multiple ways to communicate is necessary because they cannot move. For example, if a seed is brought by wind to an isolated spot and grows up as a tree there, it still should have a way to communicate with other trees. 

Why is it so important to know that plants can communicate? Does it mean that plants have thoughts or intentions? I think we need to treat everything in a respectful manner, no matter it is alive or not.   

https://uplift.love/trees-talk-to-each-other-in-a-language-we-can-learn/

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August 16, 2021

TRC (Truth and Reconciliation) 's 94 "calls to action" that aims to make things better. Calls 62 to 65 are about education. 

 

Reconciliation Pole at UBC's Vancouver campus (2017):

It tells the story of the time before, during, and after the Indian residential school system.