eJournal 2: Analyzing Problems, Analyzing Context

I modified my 5 whys from last week and focus on the student perspective.   Here is the updated 5 why exercise:

The project that I intend to work on is a 8th grade math unit on multiple representations of functions.

1. Why? This is a difficult unit requires the students to shift between the different representations and utilize their knowledge and understanding of word problems, expression building, graphing and deciphering a pattern from a table of data to answer the questions. 
2. Why? Students do not have a firm grasp of several of the representations.
3. Why? They tend to follow along with the lessons but may not take on the challenge of practice or developing their own methods of solving. 
4. Why? Teachers might tend to lecture or spend too much time showing them the method rather than let them get more time experiencing the problems.
5. Why? Students do not fully engage the teacher or lesson and generate questions or develop a confidence that they know the lesson.

Performance Analysis

It is common for students to struggle with the multiple representation unit.  The underlying issue based on the 5 whys is that they may not engage the learning process when learning each of the 4 representations that are taught independently.  This type of unit is type of capstone to functions and they lack a solid foundation or confidence with the knowledge they do possess for each of the components.   The issue is certainly instructional and can be addressed by developing an engaging unit that entices the student to engage a real life problem that is meaningful to 8th graders.  The solution is quite simple, right?


Needs Assessment

The more challenging aspects of multiple representations are graphing the expression or deriving the expression from the graph.   There are fundamental algebra aspects to this problem, but they are not taught slope and offsets until the following year.  Therefore, they have to arrive to the answer through observation.  If they are given the correct type of problems, guiding questions and time to explore and discover the patterns, they should be able to relate the graph to the equation and subsequently to the table and word problem.


Context Analysis

The class size is up to 20-25 students and they are in class for a 50 minute period. They have access to laptops and ipads.   Individual work, pairs and groups can be formed, however, my experience is that many students do not fully understand how to take full advantage of their peers and they get distracted or do not seek help when they do not know what to do or if they have a conflict.  Technology is encouraged by the administrator, however, a student centered, engaged, non-worksheet style of lesson is the only hard requirement by the principal.  The internet at the school sometimes goes out and laptops often requires several minutes to log into the network.    Teachers also like to take lessons and make them their own. If there are parts of the lesson that are critical, it is likely they will respect that part it and leave it intact.