October 2007 — News
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Homework: A Math Dilemma and What To Do About It
Homework might involve an open-ended task or a unit long independent investigation, which serves to synthesize content and develop literacy skills. Short- and long-term projects and performance tasks, which include options for oral, visual, or written response modes, allow students to test their interpersonal and self-expressive styles of learning math. Again, technology can play a role. For example, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills developed Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Literacy Maps for core subject areas and included representative ways that technology can be used in mathematics at grades 4, 8, and 12. Consider the following "tip of the iceberg" in relation to NCTM standards:
- Newspapers, books, spreadsheets, graphing programs, calculators, computers, Internet, films, TV programs, websites, databases, Internet, and digital libraries can help students gain information and media literacy. These would be useful sources for the study of number sense, statistics, and data analysis.
- Digital cameras, laptop computers, multimedia presentation software, graphing calculators, probes, and Web development software can be used to enhance creativity and intellectual curiosity. For example, students might take photos showing geometric representations in their surroundings and create a math slide show or Web page. Taking pictures of road signs, buildings, and nature can be used to illustrate measurement and geometric concepts and key vocabulary and would be far more beneficial than just a worksheet on angles, parallel lines, polygons, symmetry, patterns, and so on. The investigation, sharing, and discussion of those bring out the self-expressive style of learning and certainly is a non-routine way of learning.
- Internet, presentation, word processing, and desktop publishing software can be used to communicate with students in other communities or countries, participate in national math competitions, or to discuss concepts with outside experts in online bulletin boards. Some of those experts might relay how they apply key benchmarks in patterns, functions, and algebra in their work. What fun it might be to report on those in the school newsletter.
These become tools for accountability and adaptability. Further, student reflections on their math learning and putting examples of procedural, conceptual, contextual, and investigative learning into a paper-based or e-portfolio provides evidence of growth and dimensions of math learning that go far beyond results of a single standardized test. Chances are that such a portfolio would also assist with test preparation, as Prince George's Public Schools (MD) finds for their MSPAP preparation process.
