My Weekly Report and Reflection #4

     This week's Math class had a lot of useful activities, understanding what interleaving was and how  it related to a rich performance task. All of the tasks we did within class required a "higher-level of learning" and reasoning, requiring the students to have a "growth mindset". Every task we did within class, was extremely rich and needed to be executed with a partner, which allowed every student to "talk" about the strategies that they used in order to answer the questions. In the previous forums, "talking about the strategies" is one of the most effective ways for students to not only learn themselves, but to learn from others as well. This strategy was very effective when introducing the concept of "Interleaving practice" into the curriculum. Interleaving practice means that students do not answer questions in a blocked format, but in a randomized format. Our instructor achieved this by having us go around the room, completing various "stations" that required us to think of different strategies in order to answer the questions. The Problem below goes over a mathematical solution to explain the concept of "growth" utilizing multiplication, addition, and problem solving skills.

Heartwell, 2016

     Another station that we were asked go go to was the "spiral" station, drawing flower like objects from using the tool below. An extension of this could be (Where could this technique be used in the real-world, or how many times does it take the pencil to go around a whole 360 degree rotation). This tool was extremely interesting to use and visualize the different colours that could be incorporated into this. This was an extremely rich performance task for the class to complete.

Heartwell, 2016 

     Rich Performance Tasks (RPT) require "open-ended and higher-order thinking" questions that need a thoughtful application of knowledge and skills in context. They establish authentic contexts that reflect the genuine application of knowledge, and students are motivated by "real-world" applications. RPT's when used in assessment enable teachers to gauge student understanding and proficiency with complex processes, not just measuring discrete knowledge. They are suited for the 21st century learner, weighing heavily on the 21st century skills such as, critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, communication, and technology use. I experienced this when our teacher asked us to expand mixed fractions such as 3 1/4 and 2 5/6 and find the range between the two numbers. The teacher approached this question with decimals in mind, where I took a different approach and expanded these numbers. I found a common denominator and expanded, 68/24 to 78/24, any number between these numbers would fit. the teacher noticed this technique, and I had to explain to the class on the board. These problems intrigued me because I have a strong previous understanding of improper fractions. A real world application of this could be with lumber with buy a certain amount of lumber to cover the perimeter of a fence. These problems were a good way to address the 21st century learner skills, and should be incorporated within the classroom as readily as possible.