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add context to your lesson

Add a $: Context Matters

Posted on November 9, 2018November 21, 2018 by Alice Keeler

add context to your lesson

Add Context to Lessons

Context is not one of the 4 C’s but it should be. When designing lessons I ask myself “why would the STUDENTS care about this?” What context can they relate to? How does the context answer the question “when will I ever use this?”

Dollar Sign

I was working with my 3rd grader on decimals. She was struggling to understand why she would carry to the left instead of to the right. I simply put a dollar sign $ in front of the numbers and suddenly it was “easy.” How is it that a simple symbol suddenly takes a difficult topic and makes it easy? I find I am often explaining a math example in terms of money. Money is a context people understand. Random math problems that come from nowhere, hard to understand.

The 4 C’s

Collaborate: Social Learning Theory by Dr. Bandura. We learn more together. Classroom discussion is highly rated for learning. How will I get students away from doing things individually at their desk to working with others and discussing their thinking.

Critical Thinking: Most of the math book is DOK 1. Follow steps and procedures and get the right answer is low critical thinking. The math problem may be HARD but it’s not complex. My quick and dirty for increasing the DOK is asking “How much do the students have to FIGURE IT OUT versus follow directions?”

Creative Thinking: Creativity is not a craft, it’s creative thinking which can be writing an essay. Are each students submitting something that looks similar? Then it is not creative thinking, and probably not critical thinking. Tip is to provide more vague directions that force students to make a decision that will result in their work being different than their neighbors.

Clearly Communicate Ideas: Communicating is not necessarily talking or using words. Students should communicate their ideas and thinking.

and I like to add “Context” and “Real Data” as elements to consider when designing a lesson.




Related

Related Alice Keeler Blog Posts:

  1. Lesson Planning – What Does it Look Like in 2016?
  2. Exactly Why Are You Using Tech????
  3. How Is This Better Than Paper?
  4. Around the World: Fun is Not Best

1 thought on “Add a $: Context Matters”

  1. Eli Q Cunningham says:
    June 25, 2019 at 9:12 am

    Abstract Math without relating it back to the real world is confusing. Math is just a way of describing the world around you.

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Alice Keeler is a mom of 5. Current High School math teacher. Developer for Schoolytics.com. Google Certified Innovator, Microsoft Innovative Educator, Google Cloud Innovator Champion, and Google Developer Expert. Founder of #coffeeEDU
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Alice Keeler: Mom of 5. Current High School math teacher. Developer for Schoolytics. Founder #coffeeEDU. Google Certified Innovator. Microsoft Innovative Educator. Google Developer Expert. EdTech Specialist.

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