Unit 2 Student Interests
Student Interests
Unit Objectives
- You will be able to identify student interests and connect them to your existing curriculum.
Introduction
- There are many concerns regarding the depth at which students are learning and comprehending what they are being taught. To deepen their understanding of your curriculum incorporate student interests into your lesson plans. Doing so will increase motivation and therefore deepen their understanding of your lesson.
Warm up Activity
- The numbered list below contains a set of questions which can be used to introduce or develop understanding of mathematical concepts or rules. These questions are drawn from the everyday world of potential interests of the students.
- Answer questions 1, 4, and 5 from the list below.
- List the steps a class would need to take to obtain prerequisite information related to questions 2 and 3.
- For each question write additional spinoff questions that could be used to enhance the mathematics being taught.
- What kinds of numbers appear on soup labels, cereal boxes, the odometer of the family car, a light bulb? What is the largest and smallest number in each case?
- If all the litter found in one week in the square block area around the school were recycled, how much and how many different kinds of trash could be salvaged?
- Tyrus Cobb, a former baseball player, had a lifetime batting average of .367. Compare this with the top batting average of this year’s world series players and the top batting average of your school’s varsity players.
- Winning at pool is said to bepend on a combination of skill and use of geometry. What uses of geometry?
- Obtain a snapshot and an enlargement of the photo. Tape these on a sheet of paper. Show how lines connecting corresponding points can be used to locate a center of enlargement. Sketch a still larger photo by extending the pattern lines.(Farrell and Farmer, 1988)
Activities
- Read the following research article written by Mathew Mitchell [1]. Focus your reading on pages 3-15 and 20-24. After reading reflect on the following questions:
- How can interests be used to motivate student?
- How can you design lesson that revolve around personal interest? situational interests?
- Conduct a student interest survey, but before doing so read the following link that discusses tips to follow when conducting a survey.[2]
- Extended Reading
- This article is taken from a chapter out of the book, Teaching Strategies in Gifted Education. The authors focus on ways to grab the unmotivated students attention.[5]
Summary
- How can you apply your curriculum to your students interests? Use the attached table as a guide to organize your information from the student interest surveys that you conducted. [6]