Grand Valley's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has a policy that all courses must meet and have a culminating experience during finals week. Typically, I try to do something other than a traditional exam during these meetings. Most of my students are preservice teachers, and I want to offer them an alternative way to "show what they know" and reflect on the semester; this often entails presentations. But this year we decided to throw a party.
I got the idea when I attended a session at the NCTM 2017 Annual Meeting and Exposition that was led by Kassia Omohundro Wedekind and Mary Beth Dillane - "We are Mathematicians": Building Mathematical Communities Based in Sense Making, Agency, and Joy. During the session, they talked about kids at their school hosting a math party for their peer, teachers, and parents. At the party, the kids shared some of their favorite math activities. I decided this would be a great way to wrap up the semester.
We started the celebration with a popular party game: The Marshmallow Challenge.
Then the pre-service elementary teachers started developing their Math Teaching Vision Boards. I got the idea from this podcast that discusses the role instructional vision has on math teachers' instructional practice.
After about 20 minutes, we were ready to share our visions. We didn't have peers, teachers, or parents at our party, so we set up a series of viewing venues arranged by group.
The sharing looked a like this:
At the end of the party, the preservice teachers gave me some feedback. One said, "That was 2 hours of reflection disguised as fun."
Another complained that they didn't get to go to the viewing parties of their table-mates. I told them that was too bad but maybe they could connect with those peers after class to talk about their visions. Then I wondered out loud, "Do you think I did that on purpose?"
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