Reflection on Kinemalgebratics!

MAED 314a-301 INTRODUCTION TO ALGEBRA THOUGH KINEMATICS (aka "KINEMALGEBRATICS")

I would initially like to take a moment and thank Amelia and Erwin for supervising the ball-rolling activity. Although I was managing the other group in their derivations of the kinematics equations and building their concept of algebra, I could hear how much fun university students were having with a simple activity, and it was overwhelmingly reflected in their reviews and comments. I take great pride in knowing that this mathematics activity could easily be the highlight of any grade 8 students day.

Also, many thanks to Erwin for his fantastic sign. That small detail was the highlight of my day. Not that today was a bad day... just otherwise uneventful. :P

As a mathematician, it would hurt me not to include a statistical analysis of my peer feedback, so I'll just get that out of the way now. Each topic is listed by category (Clarity, Active learning, and Connected mathematical ideas) and simply the assessment item number, to save space. I've included the average (AVG) and the standard deviation (STDEV), as well as my own personal assessment (MIKE).

CLARITY 1 >> AVG 4.36 >> STDEV 0.48 >> MIKE 4.00
CLARITY 2 >> AVG 4.68 >> STDEV 0.44 >> MIKE 4.00
CLARITY 3 >> AVG 4.80 >> STDEV 0.40 >> MIKE 4.00
ACTIVE 1 >> AVG 4.82 >> STDEV 0.39 >> MIKE 5.00
ACTIVE 2 >> AVG 4.73 >> STDEV 0.45 >> MIKE 5.00
ACTIVE 3 >> AVG 4.50 >> STDEV 0.67 >> MIKE 4.00
CONNECT 1 >> AVG 4.36 >> STDEV 0.48 >> MIKE 1.00
CONNECT 2 >> AVG 4.45 >> STDEV 0.66 >> MIKE 3.00

My personal assessment reflects how well I think our group did on planning and executing this activity. I believe that every group member really helped to make this a fantastic group project and a great learning experience for the "students" in the classroom.

There should be two items that stand out immediately to the casual observer. First, I scored our group 1/5 for CONNECT 1 (The instructors offered activities that connected to other areas of math). I would like to explicitly state that although this is a "low" mark, I do not believe it represents a failure of any sort, but simply a narrow focus on a specific 15 minute lesson.

Second, I scored our group 3/5 for CONNECT 2 (The lesson connected to other areas of life & culture). I believe that given the 15 minutes, this is a sufficient undertaking. However, if we had been given 30 minutes, I would have liked to introduce more complicated algebra using kinematics (d = d0 + v*t). Simply put, these low scores are not a failure on the part of the group, but instead a reflection of the time constraint.

Next, I would like to address some of the more prevalent "constructive criticism" comments that were listed on the peer reviews. The first comment deals with coordination of the two groups. Unfortunately I ran a half minute behind on the first group, and the second group had to wait until we finished. Although this does not seem like very long, I'm sure it would be an eternity for a grade 8 student. If we were doing an activity like this in a class with multiple instructors, I think having an official "time keeper" to give 2min and 1min warnings would help everyone (read: Mike B.) to pace their lessons appropriately.

The second "constructive criticism" was that we should have better outlined our objectives to the class before beginning. I am still on the fence about this comment, since although I know that many students, myself included, prefer an ordered and clearly laid out lesson structure, I do believe that the world "Algebra" might invoke terror in young students, and I really do like the idea of teaching it implicitly without actually naming the technique until the students are comfortable with the material. Any thoughts on this matter?