One of the articles that we were responsible for reading
this week was on the topic of embedding rich tasks within the curriculum.
Jennifer Piggott does an excellent job of describing what a rich task is, as
she breaks down why rich tasks are so important to our students growth and
development. A memorable quote that really stuck with me from the reading was
when Jennifer Piggott stated that “On its own a rich task is not rich - it
is only what is made of it that allows it to fulfill its potential.” (Piggott,
2011). I thought that this quote
was extremely important because it is our job as teachers, to create tasks for
our students that offer different opportunities to meet the needs and levels of
all of our learners. From my understanding about our discussions in class, a
rich task could be a task that provides students with multiple ways to approach
the task. This is important because offering students different levels of
challenges allows them to choose the approach that best suits their level of
learning and it also gives them opportunity to take on a more challenging
approach, if they feel comfortable and want to broaden their mathematical
knowledge. Rich task should also be relative to the students (real life
connections), generate discussion and student engagement, and allow for
learners to pose their own problems. Although, as we discussed in class, not
all rich tasks must incorporate all of these things but it will be highly
beneficial for your students to include a number of these approaches in your task.
This week
Daniel and I successfully completed our first webinar! I must admit that I was
very anxious leading up to this. I wasn’t really sure how this would turn out
because I am not the most tech savvy person, therefore my biggest concern was
making sure that our video, audio, and recording was successful. Thankfully, we had two laptops with us because
one of our laptops decided that it did not want to cooperate with us, right
before our webinar began. With a small delay, we got into our webinar and
everything came full circle. I really enjoyed this experience and I must say
that our group got into some great discussion on differentiated instruction. I
think the one thing that I really learned about this experience is the
importance of discussion and collaboration. Even though it was myself and
Daniel presenting, I feel that because our group was so willing to engage in
discussion and collaboratively answer questions, we were both able to learn
from the experiences of our peers. This is why I think that it is so important
for teachers to promote collaborate and student centered learning in their
classrooms, so that they can learn from the experiences of others, bounce ideas
off of one another, and gain deeper understandings of mathematical content. I
am very interested to try and incorporate webinars somehow in my classroom, as
I think it is a unique tool that can be used to promote a differentiated way of
learning.
Hi Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI really find that quote you shared gives a really important message about how the choice of words are important in the questions we provide for our students. The richer they are, the better they meet the needs of all levels of students in the classroom. This one definitely one thing lacking when I grew up and the teacher continuously saw us to always be at the same level as our peers. I have to agree that the webinar did open up a lot of discussion about how differentiated instruction is really important to integrate. It was a great experience to work alongside with you and collaborate our own ideas about how to best introduce the concept of DI to other fellow peers and make sure that it was successful and communicated a lot of information but also blend it with other activities that enhanced all our ways of learning.
Hey Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI really loved the part of your blog that states how rich task should also be relative to the students and generate discussion. I feel that the way many of us teacher candidates are coming out math class can only be described as positive and motivated. I can confidently say that we all feel that a math class should be collaborative and conversations should always be occurring. I too had my challenges with the webinar, but it seems as though it has been a very beneficial experience for many of us (including myself). This activity has opened up yet another door in our teaching professions and how we can use technology in our classroom. Great post this week!
Hi Kevin,
ReplyDeleteGreat job on your blog post this week! I think that the quote you included from Jennifer Piggott, “On its own a rich task is not rich - it is only what is made of it that allows it to fulfill its potential” is extremely applicable to our discussion this week. Understanding and knowing our students can create this potential for rich tasks. I’m glad to hear that your webinar went well, and I think many get intimidated by using new technology and apps, but I’ve found that the webinars could potentially be applied to the classroom. Where students in the intermediate grades could use google hangouts to host their own webinar on a topic, and save it for the class to watch.
Hi Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI love how you had a growth mindset about your webinar, and that it went well for you! I also did my webinar this week, and had many of the same concerns as you. Technology is definitely a struggle sometimes, but since it's such an integral part of our society, then we definitely need to work with it! I really like how you mentioned that you were able to learn from your peers throughout the webinar, even though you were the ones running it. I think that teaching is just as much about us learning from our students as them learning from us.
Keep up the great posts!