Entrance Slip: Nov 24

Annotated Bibliography: 6 sources from me, another 6 sources available on Mike's blog!

 Non-Academic Sources

Making Math Moments that Matter. (2019, November 28). Building Thinking Classrooms: An Interview with Peter Liljedahl and Judy Larsen [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0TCvExju14&ab_channel=JudyLarsen

This podcast episode called “Building Thinking Classrooms” with Judy Larson and Peter Liljedahl helps to explain why it’s important to build a classroom that utilizes micro and macro practices in order to optimize learning and doing. This will be important for us to identify different ways group learning encourages individual thinking.

Orr, J. & Pearce, K. (Hosts). (2019, April 22). The Thinking Classroom: An interview with Peter Liljedahl (No. 21) [Audio podcast episode]. In Make Math Moments. https://makemathmoments.com/episode21/

In this podcast episode, John Orr and Kyle Pearce also discuss “Building Thinking Classrooms” with Peter Liljedahl and make one point that I love: the content of a curriculum is just context; the processes or the competencies are the content. In the line of group work, again Peter talks about micro practices such as having groups working around the classroom in a dynamic way, such that when you look around, the learning space looks safe and collaborative. This is an interesting source for exploring the group tie-in to contextualized learning.

Adobe Experience Cloud Blog. (2019, January 30). Structured vs. Unstructured Work: What’s the Difference and Which Is Best for You? Adobe Workfront. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://www.workfront.com/blog/structured-versus-unstructured-work-what-is-the-difference-and-which-is-best

This article describes the differences between unstructured and structured work and the different scenarios in which using either would be advantageous. It is mostly contextualized in a business setting, but will be helpful for having us inform our advice for teachers who are looking to assess a certain metric with students (i.e. assessing organization versus collaboration).

Academic/Papers

Liljedahl, P. (2014). The affordances of using visually random groups in a mathematics classroom. In Y. Li, E. Silver, & S. Li (eds.) Transforming Mathematics Instruction: Multiple Approaches and Practices. New York, NY: Springer.

This is another perspective from Peter Liljedahl to explain the benefits of using visually random groups, specifically through the differentiation of social vs educational reasons for group work, and how using nonstrategic groupings can actually be developmentally beneficial to students and teachers. This is a great resource that addresses different levels of the curricular competencies. 

Gillies, R. M. (2003). The behaviors, interactions, and perceptions of junior high school students during small-group learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(1), 137–147. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.95.1.137

This article discusses the benefits of working in cooperative groups rather than individually or in competition with eachother. It also evaluates the effectiveness of learning with structured vs unstructured group activities, concluding that the structured work led to more task-related discussions and higher sense of respect in the group. We will use this paper to help form our arguments with regard to the psychological and educational benefits of structured group activities. 

Bartko, W.T., Eccles, J.S. Adolescent Participation in Structured and Unstructured Activities: A Person-Oriented Analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 32, 233–241 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023056425648

Although this article speaks about structured or unstructured activities in a more extracurricular sense, it is interesting to see that students excel (developmentally and academically) most when they are participating in driven and structured activities frequently, reducing the time spent on passive, unstructured activities. This is a great resource to help us explain the benefits of structured and unstructured activities both in and out of school.

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To be in contact with the real world of teaching and learning, we are planning on reaching out to Peter Liljedahl, and I will definitely be talking to the teachers in the STEM program at my practicum school, including a math-based teacher Mr. Mike Hengeveld and his Tech Ed counterpart Mr. Carl Janzes who have incredible amounts of experience in coordinating group learning and group work in project-based classrooms.

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A good hands-on activity for this presentation will be splitting up the class into groups to complete a worksheet and having some groups be randomized, some predetermined, some structured and some unstructured. Debriefing the class experiences with going through the worksheet may lead to some interesting insights.

Exit Slip: October 21

 Today's discussion about gender in mathematics and physics is something very near and dear to my heart. As a woman and an ethnic minority, being in engineering, let alone specializing in the mining industry, marginalization is something that I am always aware of. After my first week in Materials Engineering, it definitely dawned on me that I was one of 4 girls in my class of 40 - and of those 4 girls, I was one of 2 that regularly came to class. I actually consider myself very lucky, because I was raised in a home where my mom had the higher education, more advanced degree, and more high-level corporate job. She had a sense of assertiveness at home that I was raised in and I think was quite intensely transferred to my siblings and I. I even see it in the types of partners and relationships that we tend to pick. 

I think it's interesting for me to see this prejudice looking back on my more recent experiences, since it was not something that I think I've noticed completely. I also thinks this reiterates how much this bias is systemically engrained, since I can't even recall where I've had to go through this. My examples are not about some intense personal confrontation, but more about the general breakthrough of having women representation in my degree. From not having female bathrooms on every floor of our building, to having been on specific hiring committees tasked with finding women professors, to not having female role models in my field. It is definitely subtle but the lack of female presence definitely ended up being a factor for why I chose not to pursue a career in my area of engineering. I am lucky that I had professors who spoke highly of me and who did not ignore the fact that I was a woman, but instead celebrated the diversity I brought to my field! I know others were not as lucky, and had to deal with a lot of shaming and insults. 

One of my biggest motivators in showing up for my students is the fact that I can be a female role model in STEM. And it's not that I have a highly developed technical background or a unique comprehension, either. I wanted to become an engineer, so I did. I want my students to know that they do not need to be the smartest one in the room in order to deserve a place there, but if they want a place, their gender should not be one of the hurdles they face.

Inquiry Project Part 1 + 2

by Jaymi and Mike

Question:

How can we use group work to enhance the social emotional learning of our students?

Concept A: Methods of grouping students (student choice, random grouping, teacher choice)

Concept B: Structured vs. un-structured assignment/play (clear, specific tasks vs. flexible planning and learning)

We are interested in this topic because it's an important facet of the way that we both want to run our classrooms. Speaking for just myself (Jaymi), for me I'm really emphasizing in my teaching philosophy the idea of having my students develop ownership over their wellbeing. I think that one of the best ways to know what you need as a student is to have to work with others. Students will learn how to communicate their needs, understand the way they can best connect and build relationships with others, and navigate conflict. I'm excited to see the benefits of every facet of group work, as I believe that it is not about advantages/disadvantages but about the targeted benefits between each setup. 

Entrance Slip: October 21

 I read the excerpt from Braiding Sweetgrass and was deeply moved by this chapter. Beyond just the generally beautiful concept of the grammar of animacy, I really appreciated her insight into Indigenous ways of knowing and being. I think it has had the most profound effect on me in years in terms of my own relationship to Indigenous culture and the idea of assimilation. The stories of the elders who speak Potawomi fluently were very impactful on having me be able to move from sympathy to empathy when it comes to internalizing the horror of residential schools. I will never know what it was like, but hearing stories like this allow me to be deeply reverent for the survivors and cultures that endured that experience.

I think the idea of animacy is an incredible way of observing the world, and something I bring into my writing in poetry or storytelling, which makes sense of why it’s such an integral part of Indigenous language. It reminds me of the idea of personification as a literary tool, even though as Dr. Kimmerer explains, it’s so much more than having the tree or rock be a person, it’s about allowing them to live as a rock or a tree, and justifying their right to life through that body. 

I think it is incredible powerful to use these tools to help students breathe literal life into science. It’s not just about like charges attracting like charges in magnetism. I can see how having my students be able to describe behaviour in the context of living could be very impactful for their understanding of a concept. I am excited to share this approach and this idea of care for our environment around us as we stop thinking of ourselves as separate from nature. I would also love to learn more terms like “puhpowee” in order to explain other concepts to my students and have them see how there are tools beyond the English language to help them visualize or describe subtle works of the world! I think it would be a great way to also involve the different cultures from students and have them embrace their own languages or other languages in terms of science. For example, I could have students research words in other languages to describe questions or phenomena they’re curious about. It’s fascinating how even though it’s not common in English, I understood immediately the feeling behind “being” a Saturday. 

Exit Slip: Oct 14

 I thought today's class was great! I really enjoyed beginning to explore my inquiry project topic. I also had a lot of time to think about how I could disrupt the physics classroom after reflecting on the entrance slip article. 

Reflections on Videos:

Jo Boaler

Cause of underachievement in math

"The elephant in the room" - the idea that only some kids can be good at math

There is no math gift or gene; every child can excel in math through schooling and beyond

Fixed vs. growth mindset; you either can do math or you can't vs. you can be determined to keep trying to learn math and get better at it

Parents play an important role in encouraging a fixed mindset. "You're so smart" praise only when they're succeeding, instead better to do "wow, you're learning, that's great". Effective even from 0-3 years.

Memorizing vs. looking for big ideas

Do you know how to pose the right question to find an analytical answer?

Teaching how to do computation by hand, rather than having computers doing that and having students focus more the conceptualization. 

Math: problem solving, reasoning, using intuition, making connections.

Why is it so boring for students? How can we make it more multi-dimensional so that more students can engage with it?

Students solving a problem rather than the teacher. Students building upon each other's thinking. 

How do you maintain a growth mindset in a class where answers are either right or wrong? Not about learning but more about performing. Open the math task to have kids see different threads of the same problem.

Math is not about speed!

Growing a synapse when making a mistake is not bad, mistakes = brain growth, getting things right does not grow synapses.

Grades

Students are more focused on the grade than on the learning experience

Have students choose their own grades

How do we mark students' competency without grades?

What does the post-secondary application process look like without grades?

Entrance Slip: October 14

The article for today's reading, "Dancing Teachers Into Being" was an interesting and artistic read to help me open my view about the type of work that the Orchard Garden is geared towards, both in developing teachers and students. 

I think that some of my own hopes and concerns in the profession of teaching were addressed in the article, mainly in the ways how I can provide an alternative learning experience for students and the types of "disruptive education" that I might enjoy providing in the classroom. By disruptive education, I mean learning in a way that disrupts the students' idea of what learning physics or science needs to look like. I think it's an idea that I've been playing around with a lot this year as we have so many inquiry-focused or demo-based lessons. For me, learning physics in high school and beyond was a pretty standard recipe: stand-and-deliver, maybe watch a demo and talk about it, test. Since my interests don't actually lie in theoretical physics, it's encouraging for me to see research and discussion about other effective ways to be able to engage students in science and natural phenomena.

I love the image of people napping in the garden as part of a class, and I also really loved the flax grid. I think the idea of taking time away from a classroom environment is something that is really different from the typical learning experience. Napping is also such a fascinating way to do this because your mind really does get a chance to be somewhere else. I am hoping that I can figure out some kind of way to blur the time constraints of my classes and have students feel separated from the confines of 'clock time'. The flax grid was a beautiful visual and I loved the dance described in the article, more than just trying to make kids sit down in class, we continue to try to put them in boxes of "scientist", "auditory learner", "class clown", etc instead of allowing them to grow and flourish outside of those boxes. As the flax was growing outside of its grid, it was also budding flowers, changing colours, etc! Such a beautiful metaphor for releasing students from their own box.

I am still exploring the idea of being able to effectively teach curriculum in a more creative way. Learning this course in the garden has really opened my eyes to the idea that curriculum can look different than the textbook, and to the value that this learning experience adds for students who think that every day at school looks the same. I can truly differentiate every class we've had in the garden, but find it a little blurrier for the classes where I'm just sitting at a table listening to the professor. One of my core beliefs is that people should be doing something every day that is different; I think getting stuck in routine is one of the quickest ways to not be present in your life. The world changes quickly around us and I think that continuing to push yourself outside of routine gets harder as we grow up, gain dependents, have other responsibilities...high school is one of the times in your life, where you are gaining independence even though mostly still living with your guardians...you should not be feeling mundane, but instead playing or doing parkour with the world and the limits around you. 

Exit Slip: October 7

 Today's class in the garden was a lot of fun! It was great weather to be outside.

My personal favourite part was the sit-and-stop in the same place as before, as I was able to observe the pear tree and how the environment has changed in the past two weeks. I've included my thoughts and observations. I was reflecting on my experience afterwards with Mike, and realized that I hadn't registered any sounds while I was sitting. This happens to me often when I'm deep in thought, where I can block out sounds very easily. Both a blessing and a curse, and maybe a sense that I need to be paying more attention to.

The other activity of today was a compass and straight edge activity with leaves. Jenny and I looked at two leaves with very different levels of complication at a surface glance. With the more simplistic rounded leaf, we thought it would be really easy as we could just do two circles and have them intersect in the shape of the leaf. However, when we were starting to work on this more, we realized it was going to be way more complicated to do this, and what we could do instead was break it down in a bunch of smaller circles. You can see the multiple layers of circles in the images below. 

For the other leaf, we started with the general idea of the triangular shape, and then got more detailed as time allowed. Next, we tried to use circle bisection to approximate the tip of the leaf, and connected these bisections to approximate the structure of the main vein. We also used fractals to extend the use of triangles and straight edges for the details of the leaf. We realized that the smaller triangles could be broken down into even smaller triangles, etc, all extending to the main stem of the leaf.

I reflected on outdoor learning after class and am encouraged to do more outdoor learning with my future classes as a method of incorporated First Peoples' Principles of Learning. I think that outdoor learning can be used as a tool to embody your learning and to interact with nature. I think that a lot of teachers mentally check this off as a decolonization practice, but the real anti-racist practice is to explain the 'why' to your students. Instead of just having a fun class outside, I hope that my students will leave with a true sense of why it is important to connect with nature and what that can teach us.

Entrance Slip: October 7

I enjoyed reading today's article and reflecting on the ways that I've used principles of mathematics in order to comprehend other topics that I've learned about in my life. 

Some of my favourite quotes are below:

"It derives from Bateson's (1972/2000, p. 279) logical categories of learning: first-order learning, which proceeds within agreed boundaries and does not challenge basic values; second-order learning, which reflects critically on the assumptions that govern first-order learning; and third-order learning, which involves a creative shift of consciousness made possible by deep awareness of alternative worldviews."

I thought this was a really easy way to comprehend different types of learning, when I maybe wouldn't have typically recognized my differentiation. It's a really interesting way to think about the different ways that I have grown through education.

"Shifts the responsibility of knowledge production from the teacher to the entire classroom collective."

I like this quote a lot because of my belief in agency of learning. It is not my job to be the sole source of knowledge for my class, but for my students to also help come up with ideas of what and how to do things. As a classroom, we have a wider variety of interest, experience, and critical thinking skills than as just one person.

The last piece of the article that I liked a lot was the explanation of the butterfly power effect: how a big impact from a small choice calls us to act with humility. I think humility is such an important piece of the puzzle as we move forward in our education and in life, and I would love to encourage my students to embody that value as they move forward in their lives.

Exit Slip: Sept 23 2021

 Today’s class in the Orchard Garden was especially enjoyable for me! I really enjoyed our two primary activities, both the poem and the rope/braid making. 

My poem was written about my favourite part of the Orchard Garden, the Asian pear tree. I chose to write in colour as it helped me feel connected to the fall atmosphere in the garden today and engage with the colours and feelings that were around me as I sat. Of course, my poem does rhyme, but it actually happened accidentally and I only noticed after a handful of lines were already written. This did lead me to making sure the other lines rhymed. I am quite proud of my poem and am excited to see how I can incorporate cross-curricular content in my science and math courses.

The next part of the class was rope and braid making, in which I got to practice my rope-making with cloth and grass and corn husks, and I practiced my 7-strand braiding with Marlaina’s climbing rope and the ribbon. I found the ribbon incredibly different to keep track of and it didn’t end up going so well. But I did love the rope making! Such an easy way to improve the tensile strength and the functionality of a lot of random materials. I even pulled out blades of grass and made rope with them!

In our group, we reflected on back sourcing and the idea of shifting our mindset from loss of convenience, to gaining skills and something new. We need to think of ways that we can continue to learn skills about how to add pieces from our hands into our lives. I was mentioning in my group that when I was vegan, I was no longer able to buy baked goods from the grocery store, or even buy cheese! It ended up with me learning how to make my own "perfect" muffins and breads, with the flours and sugars and oils that I preferred..or even learning how to make my own cheese using probiotic capsules and nuts! Instead of loss, think of gain, and think of ownership and agency over your consumption and consumerism.

Entrance Slip Class 3: Common Threads

I enjoyed reading the excerpt this week, as it gave me a lot to reflect on! Some of the bigger 'stops' for me:

• "What we make, how we make it, and where the materials come from": I was just chatting to a friend today about reusable "ziploc" baggies and how her perspective was that processing the materials gone into making them were no less damaging than processing normal disposable bags. It's an interesting thought, because even as many clothing manufacturers or furniture companies will brag, just because something is assembled or fabricated 'by hand' in Canada, does not mean they didn't use overseas, large-scale factories to process all the materials before putting the final piece together. If this is a reflection you want to have, it's important to consider the practices of which companies tend to be less transparent.
• "Support production as well as consumption": nobody is saying to stop enjoying new clothes, or new jewelry, or new furniture. But it is important to notice where we are able to support our local infrastructure, whether by supporting small local creators/artists, or by supporting the processing of local materials and resources. It's a beautiful and grounding thing to have a home decorated with pieces of the land (without excess damage).
• "The empowerment of being able to opt out of the consumer paradigm, even for one small thing": I agree with the author that this boosts self-esteem. Even collecting homegrown vegetables, I recognize the beauty of not having to depend on the cost of that tomato at the grocery store, and what that signifies in a bigger sense (no import costs/transportation costs/labour costs). And by 'cost', it is so much more than a dollar amount - what about the cost to the climate, the wellbeing and equitable treatment of employees, etc.?

Watching the crafting videos was also super interesting! I think being someone who plays/played with hairstyles a lot throughout my life, I am super keen to get back into braiding with string, and with rope! I've always been curious how different textures can affect the process of rope making. I remember making so many of those string bracelets at summer camp when I was little. Again, it was such a flattering gift when someone would make a bracelet for you - you knew the thought and time and sore thumbs that went into it.

Exit Slip Sept 16

 Today’s class in the garden was very enjoyable and insightful into different ways of putting a fun spin on math or science classes. I would have been surprised in my science class and therefore maybe a little more inclined to pay attention, especially if I were a more disruptive or “anti-science class” type of student. 

The drawing activity was a fun way of bringing more creative minds into an analytical space, and vice versa. Especially in a young science or math class where they’re obligated to be there, it’s a fun way for students to show their strengths in a different discipline, and associate where even in art, there is a space for math and science concepts. It gives students a chance to be quiet and reflective, as we experienced, but also gives them opportunity to connect with others and see their classmates in a different light.

The movement and body-oriented sun and measurement activities are also a fun way to maybe break up a lesson, get the students moving, and get some extra energy out, while still engaging with the technical material. It would be interesting to see what kids could come up with for different projects that they can use their body mechanics for. The fractal discussion was also very reminiscent of the Fibonacci sequence being presented in nature, so that could even be another spin on it. 

Outdoor learning is something I don’t think I’m super comfortable with all the time, but there is definitely a place to use it in getting students out of (or into) their comfort zones to switch up their engagement with the material. As someone from Ontario, inclement weather was the name of the game for most of the school year, so I’m excited to continue to see ways of implementing nature into my math lessons, and movement into my science classroom.