I enjoyed our class with Dr. Ricketts. I came into class motivated to work hard to link her strategies and teaching styles to a math classroom but I was surprised to find out that I did not have to work hard at all. When we talk about integrating art into math, or learning math through art, it is as simple as working creatively. I loved her use of Dixit cards and embodying a character to express emotions. I learned that something as simple and cheap as popsicle sticks can be so powerful to get students to think a little out of the box and encourage collaboration.
For the activity performed in class, my group with Madison and Caris were given popsicle sticks and the task was to come up with curricular suggestions that we and our peers can use in our future classrooms. My idea was to use the popsicle sticks to play a modified Jeopardy game. In this game, each colour of the popsicle stick would represent a chapter of the curriculum, Student will be given a preset number of sticks that they have to use. This will ensure that the students play all the chapters rather than just the one they are most comfortable with.
Madison also had a great idea of using these sticks for feedback for the teacher. At the end of class, students would put coded popsicle sticks into a cup and that would tell the teacher how they feel about the content they were taught. Student can also have fun with this idea by pretending they were voting in an election. Madison's other beautiful idea was to use the coloured sticks in an old school Kahoot game where different colours would represent different options in a multiple choice question. Caris also had an excellent idea to visually learn about rational and irrational numbers by using colours of the sticks to represent patterns. She said that if the students can see a repeating pattern, they can conclude that the number is rational or not.
Lovely!
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