Peter Mazzei

You are teaching - But are they learning?


This question bothered me as a teacher. Too often I felt exhausted after teaching for 2 hours and not sure what the students took away with them. I decided to get away from the traditional paper and pencil exercises, drill and practice sets of Math.

I wanted to use a hands on approach which made the students active learners. I chose 6 areas to try a manipulitive approach to math learning.

1) Bar Graphs

2) Pie Graphs

3) Maps - Proportions

4) Perimeter and Area

5) Volume

6) Geometry -Triangles

INQUIRY QUESTION: Can manipulitive math activities increase the success of students who score lower on math pre test?

Method:

All students who volunteered for evening class were given the math pretest on their second class. Those scoring below 40 were placed in the beginners class.

Setting:

Urban High School Evening sessions: 7 - 9 p.m., Monday and Wednesday Classes: 55 minutes in length

Students: Male and Female Ages: 17 - 65

Duration: January to May 4th Examination: Given 3 consecutive evenings 7 - 10 p.m.

INQUIRY QUESTION CONCLUSION

My first conclusion is that I was very satisfied with these six activities and plan to keep them in my core and build upon them for next year. Secondly, it takes more time to present these activities and have students react and decide how to proceed. That is a serious concern because of the time limits of Adult Education Evening Classes.

However, I was impressed with the feedback from the students. Seven out of nine were 100% in favor of these activities and 2 were 50%. Secondly, the teaching information I received was very useful. For example, in activity one, students were to catch a meter stick as it fell between their thumb and index finger. After 3 tries, they were to get their average of their 3 catches. When 8 of the students didn't know how to get their average, we had an instant lesson of how to determine averages. These were roadblocks for students because eye openers for me on several occasions. By using the inquiry method, I was free to walk around and observe the students that were meeting resistance and where clarification was needed.

I hope to share my ideas with other math teachers in public and private school settings and develop more activities for next year.

Due to the irregular attendance, it is difficult to (correlate) student success on the math exam directly to participation in the manipulative activities. However, as indicated on a student feedback questionnaire, the students almost 100% want to continue having manipulative-hands on activities. Also, from their weekly verbal comments at the end of each session, students liked working together in teams on inquiry problems presented with hands on materials. Having someone to talk over a plan made them ìfeel more comfortableî and ìseeingî how to do it make the math concept seem real. As one student said when using a protractor to measure all the angles of a triangle, "Now I get that 180, I couldn't get it when I was in school." Also, as I have already stated in my summary, there are many teaching advantages to the inquiry method. I was freed to observe the student interactions and see where they are in the lesson, success, frustration, cooperation, etc. My main concern was time considerations. It obviously takes more time to prepare for class but it also takes more time to discover the math concept and some activities require more than 55 minutes for completion. The hands on approach would be more suitable in settings that meet daily. My six activities are available for discussion.


back to inquiry 98