Sample Activities
Course
Assignments and Content. Below are some specific
assignments I have given as part of this course. The assignments I have given are those that might not be
traditionally found in either a content or methods course for future
elementary teachers.
Action
Research Project Module. This link provides an
entire module that can be utilized for those who wish to integrate an
action research project into their content, methods, or other courses
for future elementary teachers. The
assignment as given to students is included along with a peer review
form and some annotated comments for faculty and examples
(titles/abstracts) of prior projects that I thought were especially
effective.
Student
Automathographies. This
assignment had students reflect on their past as it relates to
mathematics and their future as mathematics teachers.
I borrowed this idea from one of my new math faculty colleagues.
Reaction
Paper to Fear of Math. This
assignment consisted of students reading Claudia Zaslavsky’s book Fear
of Math – How To Get Over It and Get On with Your Life and writing
a reaction paper to the book. I
had them tie their reaction back to their own Automathography (see
above) that had been written usually at the beginning of the semester as
well as to their future as elementary teachers.
Elementary
Math Content Gateways. As
this course did not emphasize the content that one might find in a
traditional course for future elementary teachers, because students came
in with a wide variety of mathematical backgrounds, and because content
skills were not being evaluated, I developed a series of what we have
termed at Occidental “Gateway” exams for this course.
The gateways consisted of math skills at the elementary level
that students should be familiar with, but were not graded and did not
get integrated into the overall performance assessment of the students
in the course. I have included under this link the four gateways that I
developed over the past years.
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