In the picture of the bird in the
persons hand I will explain the mathematics obviously when I write about the
task I will create for the picture. In the picture of the squirrel I would want
to use a task that would focus on measurement or area. In the photo students
could look at the size of the squirrel compared to what they estimate the tree
size is. I like this photo because not only can you focus on measurement but
also area. Maybe I could create a task that asks how much area they estimate
the squirrel is taking up compared to the whole area of woodchips in the
picture. Finally the picture of my family’s car in my own community I would
focus on using measurement and comparison again like the squirrel picture. Here
I would ask tasks about comparing the height of the traffic light pole to the
height of the car, etc. In order to make these open ended I think I would want
to have the students choose what to measure and compare and have them decided
HOW and with what TOOLS they are going to use to go about this task.
I am going to make two tasks based
on the photo of the bird eating seeds from the person’s hand in the forest. For
my first higher level task I would ask the students to “pick two things in the
picture and measure /compare the length of those two things to each other using
what ever tool they want.” I am hoping that even if they use non-standard units
the students would be able to start comparing objects and the see the
differences in length between different objects of different size. The second
task I would create would ask the students to “consider counting how many trees
there are in the background of this picture? How would you go about this? Count
ALL the trees in the picture? Estimate? If you estimated how would you go about
estimating the amount?” My hope is that students would try to only count one
section of the trees and then apply that number to the rest of the sections of
trees. This is the most common way to estimate so I feel that it would be a
common strategy for the students.
I really liked all of the pictures you chose to relate to math in the community. Like I said about Valand's post, the pictures are a great way to show students that math can be related to many things in the environment that we see everyday.
ReplyDeleteThe images you chose remind me of your new literacy project that you did for language arts. Since I had to review your project, I got to see all of your ideas about environmental literacy, which these pictures all relate to. Incorporating ideas and images of the environment can help to build on the students' environmental literacy, so I feel like these images were deep and significant for students.
The information in your tasks were realistic and the values that you chose to solve your tasks seem realistic and probable as well. I thought it was great that you discussed the importance of measuring and that specific units are not necessary to be able to construct ideas of size. Tying in estimation is another great element about the task because I feel like estimation tends to be overlooked in math in terms of connecting it to reality and teachers making the assumption that estimating is easy for students. By using the example of trees, students can see that estimations do not need to be accurate, which I think is important to help students understand this concept.
Based on both of the ways you described your tasks, they are higher level. To me, both tasks seem like they are procedures with connections since students are forced to find ways to complete the problems by connecting previous ideas.
Nice job!!
I thought your pictures were adorable. I like that you included a variation of our lesson study task. It gave me another example of how it can be altered for another purpose. I forgot about how important animals were, and how much students connect with problems about them. In addition, after looking at your pictures, I never realized how much you could do with just a simple photo of common animals. I know many of us came up with measurement examples, but I did not see anyone use estimation. I think this is a topic that is often overlooked, and I like that you took the time to address it. Overall, I thought your tasks were great, and that they asked the students to really dig into the content.
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