Project Description Final Draft

An Educational Need

As a Mathematics teacher, I am dually cursed and blessed with students that fail to understand the material, but are willing to go the extra mile to build an understanding. A large percentage of my ninth grade Algebra students come into the class without a strong foundation of Algebra and basic mathematics. This makes modeling new theories extremely difficult. Many of the students are constantly halted by their lack of a mathematics foundation, and others simply are slow to comprehend new concepts.

In order to offer these students further opportunities, my school district promotes an after school tutorial program. Around half the teachers participate after school, three days a week, for ninety minutes. This presents students with an opportunity to ask questions about their misunderstandings, and allows them to receive practice, in addition to the work assigned in class.

The tutorial program is a wonderful idea at heart; however it has become extremely inefficient. On certain days I am “tutoring” over twenty students. This allots me around four minutes per student, given that it takes time for administrative tasks. This is not enough time. Many of the students run into dead ends and are left waiting long periods of time for my assistance. Typically, the students complete their individual missing assignments, work on the homework, or are given additional problems for practice. I have attempted to run the tutoring sessions like a lecture or general discussion, yet this has failed due to the fact that the students often need help on completely different topics. Therefore, my problem of practice is that a potentially beneficial tutorial program has become extremely inefficient due to the fact that I am struggling to meet the diverse needs of the students.

There is so much to gain by making the tutorial program more efficient. If each student could hone in on his or her specific misunderstandings for ninety minutes several times a week, he or she would be able to overcome misunderstandings about current topics and would be able to strengthen his or her mathematics foundation. With students efficiently improving their mathematics skills after school, the pace of the class could be sped up, which would benefit the most proficient members of the class. Hopefully, I can find methods to improve the structure of these tutoring sessions, if I “focus first on classroom strategies, then on ways in which technology can enhance the lesson” (Brabec, 11).

Technology to Save the Day

Seeing that it is not feasible for me to efficiently aid all of the students that attend tutoring, turning to technology would be a very beneficial option. My solution to this dilemma is to elaborate on my classroom website so that the students can “help themselves” and help others construct a strong mathematical foundation through the use of school laptops. I plan to break down algebraic and arithmetic concepts into a multitude of lessons, which will enable students to focus on their specific misconceptions. Stand alone instructional resources will be at the heart of each of these lessons. This will allow students to receive instant feedback from the resources, rather than waiting lengthy periods of time for me to verify that they are correctly attacking a problem. Under these different lessons, I also plan to incorporate blogs, so that the students can post their questions about different concepts and can answer the qualms of others. Thus, my solution to the dilemma at hand is to place the opportunity of learning in the students’ court, by means of a rich classroom website with stand alone instructional resources and blogs that promote student collaboration. This approach should be of no cost to the school. Furthermore, it is more effective than teaching the entire class one lesson, since one lesson cannot meet all the diverse needs of the students, as stand alone resources have the ability to.

Research

I have researched the ideas of utilizing stand alone instructional resources and blogs in order to enhance the mathematic fundamentals of students. I have found resources that speak to the importance of mastering the fundamentals of mathematics…
-Study shows gap between high school, college expectations – ProQuest
-Math fundamentals- ProQuest

I have additionally found resources that discuss how to teach mathematics online (with wikis and stand alone instruction)…
-Figuring out how to teach maths online – Lexus Nexus
-Education: Do the maths: Technology/Comment/Resources: It's a numbers game: Computer games are just one way technology can transform potentially dry subjects into relevant and engaging experiences – Lexus Nexus
-Teaching math online (http://online.rit.edu/about/newsletter/one_article.cfm?which=70)
-Math Blogs - http://futureofmath.misterteacher.com/blogs.html)

Finally, I have stumbled upon several resources that possess online resources that could be posted on the classroom website in order to better explain select topics to students…
-http://www.visualmathlearning.com/
-http://www.math.com/
-http://www.heymath.com/index_row.jsp
- http://www.mangahigh.com/en_us/

The Plan

This is a rather extensive project that would consist of building online resources (blogs and stairs) for a plethora of different mathematics fundamentals. During this course I would like to focus on extending my classroom website to include lessons on the fundaments of solving equations, and the fundamental operations of integers. I hope to create stand alone resources and blogs for each topic. After this course, I hope to assess how these two lessons were received by the students, and proceed to create more fundamental lessons for the students.

The 4 Common Places of Education

To summarize; this project is centered on my teaching of the material through a classroom website, stand alone instructional resources, and blogs. This project is hinged upon teaching the material to ninth grade algebra students. The subject matter is mathematics fundamentals, namely the basic operations of integers and the basics of solving equations. The setting is after-school tutoring that meets three days times a week for ninety minutes per day.