11/15 - Meeting

At this moment in time, this is what I'm thinking of my question right now:
UH!!!!  Yikes....so I'm kind of not there now.  I was there, but some of the articles I've been reading are pushing me to think more about how kids THINK about math in every day use as opposed to making a connection between academic and after school programs.  So, maybe....hmmm.....don't know.  I'll have to get back to that one.  Also, I'm wondering more about the home-school connection and the connection between parents and teachers and how this effects students abilities to see themselves as mathematicians and/or use math daily and be successful math learners.  ARGH - too much!!! :)


Being as specific as I can be, what I want my students to learn and be able to do is:
Know that math can and how math does connect to their daily lives and how it will continue to connect to their daily lives for the rest of their lives.

I would know if my students are accomplishing the goal if I saw/heard:
Them be able to talk about the different subgroups of math and identify how they may be able to use these in the future in a career or how a grown up they know NOW is using these skills in their daily life.  For example, be able to identify that their mom uses fractions when measuring amounts for cooking and be able to be specific about how that happened.


I can find out if they are doing this by collecting:
I would say that interviewing them and/or hearing conversations from students about how math is used in places other than school.

What am I thinking now (after small group meeting)?
How can children tie real, every day math, to the learning they do in the classroom so that they can be life long math learners?
- OK, so I'm not in the classroom...what will this evidence look like?  I think that I want to continue to survey students but do a pre- & post- type survey where I ask them about their thoughts about math (see blog post from 11/3) and after they work on the Family Math activities, with the connection to every day life made clearly @ every lesson, post survey them and see if their ideas and understandings about math have changed.
Given the transiency of the students at the school, I will need to go back & interview more than the 6 students I've already spoken with.  I also wonder if the 3 grade levels is sufficient, or should I add in 2nd graders?  Adding the 2nd graders may be of interest because it's a broader age range and that may lend to a learning of how math understanding and connection to daily life changes with age.  Or it may just muddle the waters.