maths in high school

what does maths offer us?

suggest using the class as a platform for discussion. The teacher can introduce some examples to look at, every couple of weeks. However, students can propose alternatives.
Let us assume there are 19 students in the class, and that classes go for 50 minutes, and that there are 4 classes a week. This would give the average person in the class (20 people) up to 10 minutes talking time per week). But the teacher will be more familiar with the material and hence tend to dominate all discussion. If we want students to be able to speak more, and speak withat least minimal fluency, we might try small group discussion as a way of developing their ideas before putting them to the class. IN FACT, the syllabus is cyclical, each year building on what has been done before - this means that some students will know the material well, and be able to solve problems as well as the teacher can (and perhaps faster than the teacher can). We want all students to be able to contribute, but it is ok to have a system which allows the more advanced students and the teacher, to talk more than the less advanced students. But equally, we could use socratic dialogue where we elicit ideas from the less advanced students, so that they do much of the talking.

Whatever examples we do, we can adopt this approach:
use a minimal example to illustrate a point.
(elicit the method from a student, or give our own explanation). The audience can ask questions.

Let other students do similar examples. The audience can ask questions.

We then note what examples have been covered.

As a record of this, we might get students to write up a sample answer in their book.

WHEREVER POSSIBLE, relate the above to past exam paper. (The only reason for not doing this is if I don't have past exam papers, and haven't had time to get them from the school).

Category:

Education

Tags:

• maths
• in
• high
• school