Technology & Pedagogy

            For my lesson plan analysis I chose a lesson plan titled "Fill 'Er Up" that involved teaching students about volumes of rectangular prisms for a few reasons. First and foremost I chose this particular lesson plan because I believe that the core standard it focuses on is what a lot of people say is wrong with math education nowadays. That is, that we are educating students to pass tests and not giving them the skills outlined by CCSS.Math.Practice.MP4, which states that we must teach students to be able to model everyday problems with mathematics and CCSS.Math.Practice.MP2, which focuses on the relationship between abstract mathematics and quantitative mathematics. On top of this, I also chose this particular lesson plan because its use of technology, which I felt was forced and only detracted from the goals of the teacher.

            The goal of the lesson plan was to teach students about a fundamental skill that pertains to their everyday life, while also teaching them about the ideas of volume, space, and quantity, but to do so by lecturing and having them use a program that worked in abstract quantities. By doing so the plan fails to meet the standard outlined above because the students are unable to, "interpret their mathematical results in the context of the situation and reflect on whether the results make sense" (Standards for Mathematical Practice). One way to improve on this would be to start of the lesson with a student centered Q and A session as opposed to a lecture and teacher centered Q and A session. By allowing students to ask questions that they may have about definitions of height, length, depth, and volume and allowing them to define the concepts themselves the lesson become more aligned with the core standard as well as an additional standard CCSS.Math.Practice.MP6 which focuses on meanings of units and clear definitions of concepts.

            This standard is further aligned with the plan with the removal of the technology it recommends, which seems unnecessary, and actually detracts from the lesson plan. The applet recommended for use, serves little purpose as it is something that is easily modeled with real world examples, is time consuming, as even I was confused as to how the applet worked and what it was trying to achieve, and deals exclusively with abstract units. By removing the use of the applet, and instead using a shoebox with number cubes, students can use the definitions they defined at the beginning of class to measure the length, width, and height of the shoebox, as well as the real world measurements of the number cubes, to get a better understanding of what exactly volume is and how it is measured and recorded and further align the lesson plane with all standards detailed above.

URL: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArLDPnTD1B3ldG9NQWZ6UnBXdjY0UXJvREhtUDNXZVE&usp=sharing 

References:

"Standards for Mathematical Practice." Common Core State Standards Initiative: Preparing America's Students for College and Career. Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2012. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. <http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Practice>.