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In-service program documentation
Sharing strategies for using instructional resources effectively
(D7.4)
Logistics and scheduling information (by Judith Fonzi)
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| Choice of scope and format for this activity |
| Scheduling of this activity within the course |
| Materials needed to implement this activity |
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Choice of scope and format for this activity:
It is generally the case that as teachers we go in search of a particular resource or material as a result of an already identified need, and then we tend to limit our search to only the materials which have somehow been labeled as appropriate for meeting that particular need. And then, we generally make use of the material pretty much in the way the author / creator intended it to be used. While this certainly makes sense and frequently results in positive experiences it can also cause us to overlook or cast aside some potentially powerful resources. This session was intended to act as a catalyst to get people to consider alternative ways to view resources. That is, rather than always looking for piece to fill a particular need one might look at interesting resources and try to figure out how it could be used, what function it could serve.
To make this point, we purposefully orchestrated an activity around a specific resource, the Project Mathematics! video The Theorem of Pythagoras, which discusses this fundamental theorem by telling the story of the many different times and places in history where the theorem was discovered and/or proved differently. The choice of this specific resource was motivated by several reasons. First of all, many other teachers had told us that this video was "great, but over my kids heads", "really powerful but goes way to fast for my kids", "really well done but I'm not teaching the Pythagorean Theorem this year". Second, one of the facilitators had previously used this video as the catalyst of quite an unusual mathematical activity (as described in the "Narrative account of an inquiry-based instructional experience where 'The Theorem of Pythagoras' video was used" -- see Instructional Materials section), which could be brought to the participants' attention as an extreme example of how instructional materials could be used by teachers in ways that the authors' may not even have conceived of!
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Scheduling of this activity within the course
The activity was scheduled as part of the second "follow-up meeting" -- i.e., the meeting that took place after the participants had completed their requirement of implementing one of our inquiry units and had been provided an opportunity for sharing and reflecting on these experiences, and as they were now beginning to think about planning and implementing their second inquiry unit.
More specifically, this activity took place immediately following the presentation of a case-study of the planning of an inquiry unit around the Olympics Games (described in Section D7.1). Since this case-study had highlighted how the teachers frequently went in search of materials to meet a need, this enabled us to introduce this activity as a means to get us to take a different view of potential resources.
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Materials needed to implement this activity
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