Mathematics Greg Stephens

Three examples: App Design Geometry Peer-to-peer in the middle school.

Why these three? We asked students to comment on student engagement We also asked them about something they’d done in class that they felt represented ‘engagement.’ I looked among the responses for activities that I could capture in a few minutes, that represented different student populations, and that were somewhat portable, so that you would have a chance to talk about them with the larger group.

App design. The college board created a new version of AP CompSci by emphasizing the principles of computer science as a separate focus from the programming itself. The tablets in the room highlight student work as they connect what they’re learning in Health and PhysEd to the emphasis in their Principles class on user interfaces and the underlying structure of programming languages.

Geometry through Questions There are sheets with dots -- like those dots at left -- scattered around the tables. Is Geometry more about structure and definitions or more about problem-solving and analysis?

Geometry through Questions, 2 For instance, we encounter the idea of the “center” of a triangle several different ways. We could ask: where is the center? Or, more evocatively, where should we put an airport to service these 3 cities?

Geometry through Questions, 3 Before we go any further, take a moment to think about where you’d place a dot to represent the “center” or “airport.”

Geometry through Questions, 4 Our idea of engagement is that students get to see a problem in the abstract first, before we talk about what “solving” looks like. It also comes from where we go? Do we talk about perpendicular bisectors, Voronoi diagrams, or economics?!?

Posters and evaluations The basic idea was this: Examine a situation and determine if the behavior was proportional. Present your problem, analysis, and conclusion in poster form. Review the work of the other teams. Students chose this as one of the most engaging activities because they felt a high degree of accountability because of the public evaluation and also a high degree of responsibility because they had to provide feedback to other student.s

I’ll give you the same instructions. . . The teacher emphasized that feedback needs to specific. Either point to a particular strength or make an actionable suggestion. There’s no grade here, which takes the pressure down a notch, but I invite you to take a few of the postits and add your own comments to the student examples.

Knowing me, I’ve gone over my allotted time, but thank very much for giving me the chance.