Hi everyone! It’s almost September and I’ve got a new theme. I always love September because so much is new and there’s always hope for change. I have had the most wonderful summer talking to people about Problem-Based Learning and sharing my thoughts with so many interesting educators. I decided to change the theme on this blog – not because I didn’t like the pretty green theme anymore, but because I thought, why not start fresh? My colleagues and I have revised all of our materials – they are brighter and better and we are very excited. I thought I’d talk a little about my summer and the changes that we made to our curriculum. I hope that many of you will add your comments to my blog this year (now that some of you know that I’m here!)
Back in June I offered a workshop at the Technology conference at the PEA at Exeter, NH. I had such a wonderful group of teachers in my workshop who were all so curious about Problem-Based Learning. Our conversations really made me think about what I do and had me rethinking so much of what I say and do about how I discuss Problem-Based learning. I want to thank every one of those participants! I think the most exciting part for me was to see how much interest there really was out there which made me realize that I’m not doing all this in a vacuum. It’s really exciting to think that we could start a real professional discussion about all of this. It also helped me pinpoint what some of the questions, concerns and cares are out there from all of you.
In July, my colleagues and I took a long, hard look at our own materials and did some great work of our own. We spent some time rearranging the topics in our materials. For one thing, we were not happy with the way we discussed congruence of triangles. We had originally used some problems where students were asked to construct triangles with specific angle and/or side lengths. For example, construct a triangle with a side length of 8 cm, 6 cm and an angle of 24 degrees. We were hoping that they would use a protractor and measure the angle and use a ruler and measure the sides. We also hoped that some kids would come to class with the sides surrounding the angle and other kids with the sides next to each other, right? Well, those hopes were often dashed. We found that in maybe 4 of our 5 sections this exercise actually did what we wanted it to. Some students couldn’t find their protractor, so didn’t do it. Some kids used inches by accident, so they weren’t congruent anyway. Some kids used the excuse that they didn’t know how to use the protractor so couldn’t do it. This just didn’t work at all, so the idea of talking about triangle congruence in the problem went out the window altogher. The teacher ended up artificially discussing ASA or SSA anyway. UGH!
So, one of us said they had liked what they had seen somewhere else in a textbook a while back and we discussed the idea of asking the question “What’s the minimum amount of information needed to say that two triangles are congruent?” and we took it from that standpoint. On our campus, there is a big triangle in the middle of the main campus that is called the “senior triangle” which means that only the seniors are allowed to cut across is and no one else is allowed on it at all (we really do). We created a scenario where the juniors were jealous of the seniors and measured the “senior triangle” – part by part. So we took this “story line” and wrote a strand of questions where the juniors took one part of their measurements, say one angle, and copied the senior triangle – could they have had the same triangle? That is supposed to motivate the discussion (hopefully, a short one) of why having only one angle the same is not enough. If you have our materials, you can follow that strand all the way through and tell me what you think of it. We’ll see how it goes with our classes too.
There were many other changes we made, but I will save those for another entry. I have many more preparations to make. The year is beginning, whether I am ready or not, right?
