Week 3 Readings

I have relatively recently been formally introduced to inquiry based learning and it has moved me. The high school students I have worked with struggle to make logical conclusions without guidance. For the most part, I believe it to be a confidence issue, but it also has to do with the fact that inquiry is not common in high school math. These high school freshmen, who are barely getting through Algebra 1 have never been good at math. They've been told their whole lives they were struggling, whether by comparing themselves to other peers'progress, grades, test scores or even themselves or educators.

About a month ago, my mentor teacher gave them a lesson on finding the point of intersection of two lines by graphing. We had spent the previous 2-3 weeks (10-15 hours of class time + homework) on coordinate planes, plotting points and drawing lines. She asked them to plot two different lines on two different graphs, which the students did with no questions asked. Then, on the third problem, she asked them to plot those same two lines on ONE coordinate plane together and see where they intersect graphically. Arms went up in the air, productivity diminished, and they just quit. As she and I canvassed the room helping students 1 or 2 at a time. Once we got them to graph the two lines, I had them circle the point of intersection. They simply could not see that the procedure for graphing the point of intersection was the same as 1 and 2 put together. They knew how to graph points, and then a line, but had absolutely no concept of what that represented. They lacked either the desire or the ability to think critically.

Just as Patrick highlighted in our first meeting, "all learning is emotional". Squire introduces a way to implement an activity the in which students will engage emotionally. In this particular activity, the students were able to enhance their critical thinking, deductive reasoning and decision making skills as well as social skills like communication and cooperation. These are all skills the students can utilize within a traditional classroom environment. Using augmented reality or other technologies to implement unique inquiry based activities can be a tremendous advantage to the students' ability to conceptualize. However, these activities are time consuming not just to realize with students, but also for the teacher to plan. They also require a great amount of facilitation by the instructor, but this integration needs to be properly thought out. We would not only need to change our K-12 curriculum but also our TEP teacher training. Given the way our K-12 education system is set up today, these activities would need to be carefully selected and executed in order to maximize learning opportunities.