The Pedagogical Shift
Currently in my classroom, I only implement word problems from the textbook, which in most cases do not relate to my inner city, low-income youth. These problems are of no interest to my students, causing them to have no interest in them and ultimately not do them. However, when I try to create ones on my own, I find that they aren’t challenging enough for my students. And on top of all that, my students immediately shut down when they see any sort of writing in a math classroom setting. So I, as a teacher, need to change my pedagogy in order for my students to be successful. I need to realize that what I am currently doing is not working.
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Currently, when teaching the problem-solving process, it has been a very behaviorist process consisting of I Do the problem, We Do a problem similar, and You Do more similar problems. This hasn’t been successful because students walk away knowing only how to do that particular problem with the same allotted information, just different numbers. Dan Meyer (2010) stated in his TEDxNYED Talk that when it comes to word problems in the classroom or in the textbook, you are always given all the information you need, and it usually fits nicely into a formula. Additionally, practice only involves us repeatedly doing the same problem with different numbers.
So instead, I need to change my pedagogy from this behaviorist point of view to a constructivist one. Instead of the I Do, We Do, You Do, I want to have my students lead the discussion and the thought process, with me guiding. I want to change my classroom to one where students are posed a question, work in groups, come back as a class and discuss before moving on. I want to see what my students are thinking about the problems and not memorizing mathematical procedures and facts.
So instead, I need to change my pedagogy from this behaviorist point of view to a constructivist one. Instead of the I Do, We Do, You Do, I want to have my students lead the discussion and the thought process, with me guiding. I want to change my classroom to one where students are posed a question, work in groups, come back as a class and discuss before moving on. I want to see what my students are thinking about the problems and not memorizing mathematical procedures and facts.