Reflections on the coarse

This course may have not highly affected my teaching style, but effectively it was more a sort of educating my teaching techniques. By education I mean a sculpture of my personality that could really reflect on my students.

Being an experienced teacher, I have learned how to tackle some of the basic problems that they were facing, through this course I was able to analyze their conduct, I was able to innovate new teaching techniques.

Moreover, I have developed a personal organization of my goals and ideas accordingly with Bloom’s Taxonomy.

All this ended up, in developing a new personality, one is able now to analyze what is happening in class, in a highly professional way, as well as synthesize new models, especially for classroom management, and types of instruction.

Bottom of the line, one understands that any job needs some sculpturing in order to crown your techniques in a professional manner. This is what occurred in this coarse and it turned out to be one of the most professional ways to manipulate one’s thoughts educationally.

Creativity in teaching techniques

What comes along in this activity is a presentation of some teaching techniques that involve students in the learning process. During the preparation of this activity, I was wondering what type of lesson activity I shall include. Afterwards I realized that it would be interesting to introduce different types of activities, all related to geometry, that I use while teaching.

A- Cubes and Tetrahedrons drawn in Cavalier’s Perspective

It really interesting, yet difficult, to teach the students to draw 3-dimensional objects in the 2-dimension plane. This perspective focuses on representing all hidden edges with dotted lines, and all visible edges in block lines.

B- Topology – Rubber geometry

- Although topology is one of the hardest topics in math, there are some interesting applications in it such as showing that the donut and the coffee mug are mathematically equivalent.

- Cut Points of alphabetical letters. We usually bring the letters to class and allow them to manipulate those letters to find out the relevant cut points.

C- The difference between a Taurus and a Circle

Students usually don’t know the Taurus; they are interested to realize that a full closed path covering the whole surface of a Taurus is achievable.

D- The dissection of the sphere is a circle

Difficulty in visualizing the dissections of the sphere, lead us to these experiments where we bring the sphere to class and cut it off to produce circles.

Concluding, no one taught me these techniques, I personally developed them through experience, but they are sure reflections of the way of thinking I had when I was a student. I hoped that my teachers were able to show me these stuff, that’s the main reason behind me enjoying to present these stuff in my classes.

All these issues apparently; motivate the students to learn more and search more for interesting stuff in the field of math.

Constructivist Lesson Planning

Preparing a constructivist lesson plan isn’t an easy task as it may seem. It requires highly creative skills as well as detailed planning that will encounter any event that could occur during class. This planning that requires all of this preparation has its most effective outcomes on the students. It differs from several other types of planning because of the student centeredness and its high effectiveness and affectivity on the latter.

Hereunder is a detailed constructivist lesson plan.

Lesson Title: Interest

Instructional goals:

- -Teaching the student how to differentiate between the simple and the compound interest.

- Teaching the student to differentiate between annuities and interests.

- Teaching the student how to differentiate between constituting a capital and paying off a debt.

Objectives:

- Student will be able to tackle between the requirements of the instructional goals.

Content:

- Introduction of formulas and parameters.

- Calculations

- Applications in everyday life

Instructional Procedures

- The students will be divided into groups and given brochures of the same banking system.

- They will try to analyze the different kinds of interest rates offered on loans.

- They will try to analyze the different types of rates offered on deposits.

- They will try to formulate an inter-relationship amongst them.

- The teacher will guide an analysis process along with a banker that will process his knowledge to the students.

- The activity will finish by a short exercise that will show the difference between constituting a capital and paying off a debt.

Evaluation procedures:

- Each group will be asked to head to a bank in order to try to get some information regarding the interest rating.

- They will bring back an evaluation sheet from their interviewee.

- They will present the collected info to the class with demonstrations.

- They will perform a short test on the amount of knowledge acquired.

- They will be asked to formulate some kind of new loan and present it to the classroom.

As seen this type of planning requires much of work, planning and follow up. Despite its high qualities it is highly time consuming, which renders it unusable most of the time. But it is quite interesting and motivating for the students to introduce such plans at least three or four times during the semester in order to induce the qualities falling behind constructivist planning.

Portfolio Activity - Classroom Management

One should recognize that rules and regulations vary from one class to another depending on several factors such as: general maturity level, academic qualities and the type of material being taught.

The main goal behind the idea of classroom management is to maintain an academic environment inside the classroom that would enable the student to receive a reputable and effective education; however, one should not oppress the students with these regulations especially in already loaded and pressuring materials (scientific and philosophies).

Because of student diversity, rules should be malleable enough to comprehend all types of student mentalities and behavioral issues. I don't Claim that I haven't changed my rules throughout the years, but at least not radically.

Teachers should be able to understand that rules are out to facilitate student learning and make their teaching as effective as possible. The aim of rules was never to make the students feel limited and oppressed by a dictator, represented by the teacher, but rather to give the chance to excel and go beyond thinking limits. Consequently, when the rules take into consideration all the above mentioned issues, they would remain throughout the profession even though the implementation could change, but not necessarily the gist of it.

Each class reflects a certain implementation of a particular plan. For example, a highly populated class requires more strict rules than another. The rules in the scientific classes are much more malleable than humanities classes generally because the material taught induces some specific concentration among the students.

The goals in a crowded classroom could be much stricter, due to the fact that if we try to breath altogether the class becomes noisy, how about if they do any other activity. Moreover, crowded classrooms are much more diverse and most of the time heterogeneous thus causing mush trouble to the teacher.

On the other hand a less crowded class would be more malleable and more apt to work, thus the teacher could introduce some fun and enthusiasm into the material taught.

The more the teacher knows the students, their problems, their reactions, the more he/she will change the management plans along with these factors.

The plans get loose along the year, they start taught and they either become leaner or tougher with time, depending on the class we're working with.

One of the most difficult aspects in inducing a plan that would be fair for all students equally. A hyperactive student or a shy one could not cope with a certain regulation. Consequently, could cause some unfairness in the attitude towards the issue.

Although most of the above answers reflect my teacher's attitudes and consequently mine, time and experience could show some misunderstanding and some very applicable and determine goals.

My personal opinion reflects that at the center of al this issue lies an integral and sophisticated core, called the student, who, and as I have researched in previous courses, is able to develop his/her personal educational philosophy. Al this sheds light on the leading role of the teacher in understanding these philosophies thus cope the classroom management philosophies relatively.