"Now that you are one month in, how do you see this experience changing your classroom? Think in terms of what you teach and how you teach. How will your students know something has changed? Begin to articulate your thoughts on how to bring a PBL into your classroom."
In my previous posting I mentioned how I can already see this experience changing my classroom, especially how I teach. Working at Clipper has helped me realize that students need problem solving skills, they don't need to simply know rules and proerties. Those rules and properties are certianly still important, but more importantly they need to know how and when to apply these and can they communicate their process effectively to someone else. When students complain about showing their work my response has always been that it's now always about the final product but about the process and the ability to communicate their process. This experience at Clipper has only strengthened my argument. I've had instances where I've created a chart or a spreadsheet and then needed to explain to someone how and why I created what I did so that when I leave they are able to recreate it using data from later dates. If I simply gave them my product but was unable to explain how I created it, after I left it may become useless or someone would have to spend valuabe time trying to figure out what my steps were.
I would certainly like to bring in more projects into my classroom to incorporate various skills students will need such as learning to work cooperatively, organization, problem solving, real-world application, etc. I still struggle with this because it seems like an in-depth real-world math project can often turn into a science or business project which then time is spent teaching non-math concepts. We know time is precious and there are A LOT of standards to cover for the year. I know there has got to be a way to balance projects with traditional teaching (which I believe does still have value in math classrooms), I am just still trying to figure out how to do it.
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