Should schools be organized in such a way that student diversity of all kinds can be included as a resource ? Seeing individual differences not as a problem to be fixed but as opportunities for enriched learning.

(The title is adopted from an article published by IBO named "Learning diversity in the International
Baccalaureate programmes:Special educational needs within the International Baccalaureate programmes")

Is this right? [source: http://www.edstructure.org/p/knowing.html]

You will be agree with me on the fact that there is diversity in the student body. So when Ms. Moon[a teacher] starts giving instruction on "life cycle of a tree"  in her class, every student try to make sense of it in their own way.

Ms. Moon's audience includes visual learner, auditory learner, read-write learners, kinesthetic learners and many more. Parents  have sent their children to her class with the same expectation to gain knowledge. Mr. Gotiya would not prefer to send his child Shymal to a special school with special educational arrangements, instead he would like Shymal to attend classes with everyone else in his neighbour. Ms. Moon plans her lesson to address the needs of the classroom as a whole rather than focusing only on gifted and talented.


I would certainly bargain on behalf of student body and urge schools to frame their curriculum to support all types of learners. Schools should discover ways to uplift all children and help them gaining self confidence in their persuasion of knowledge.Generic teaching methods will not contribute to all learner at all times[Taken from IBO guide on special education]. I stand by Ms. Moon's approach to show variety of ways to represent life cycle of a tree, as it benefits not only those who have diverse needs but all students including the gifted and talented.

For visual learners of Ms. Moon's class. [Source: http://www.nwf.org/trees-for-wildlife/benefits-for-wildlife.aspx]

Now when a teacher plan-reflect-plan lessons as per the needs of his/her pupils, it leads to a whole bunch of new resources for the teacher. Later, these new resources can be incorporated in future classes for enriched learning of each and every student. To be successful in doing so as teachers we should increase understanding of  who we teach and what we teach[Tomlinson and Edison(2003)].

On the other side, it requires schools to allocate dedicated time for a teacher to plan, implement, review and adjust as per the needs of the diverse classroom scenario. Schools have started to encourage inclusive education so that teachers do not see individual differences as problem to be fixed but discover opportunities for enriched learning[Taken from IBO guide on special education]. But again that obviously increases cost of providing curriculum hence sometimes ineffective. Therefore it is vital that schools allocate necessary budget towards inclusive education for it to be successful in all respect.

In order to differentiate a teacher should use Web 2.0 as one of the tools. Asynchronous classroom tool Voice thread for personalized engagement, assessment and feedback. Diigo as customised resource tool for each and every student's diversified need. A class blog with sequential information organization by adding web links, presentations, videos will help an individual student to learn, to reflect and to clarify as it comes in their way. But a teacher must be prompt, updated in order to use these as resources successfully for differentiation.

These tools will help learners to achieve goals in their own time and pace. Also learners will gradually develop critical thinking as they will be heard and will be visible not only to the teacher but also a larger audience.[Above two paragraphs were added after Kevin Crouch's comment on role of Web 2.0 in differentiation] 


At the end I would like to ask, as teacher do you want to treat your student as copy of the other?[Adopted from http://www.edstructure.org/] Or will you be flexible enough to accommodate them individually?

10 Tips For Coping With Exam Stress

10 Tips For Coping With Exam Stress

Mathematics and Theory of Knowledge

Mathematics & IB learner Profile

http://www.theoryofknowledge.net/

Constructivism

"Constructivism is a philosophy of learning founded on the premise that, by reflecting on our experiences, we construct our own understanding of the world we live in. Each of us generates our own “rules” and “mental models,” which we use to make sense of our experiences. Learning, therefore, is simply the process of adjusting our mental models to accommodate new experiences."

- See more at: http://www.funderstanding.com/theory/constructivism

Mathematics IA: Exploration

This Mathematics IA exploration leaves lot of room for creativity due to open-endedness. Also  students have opportunity to combine his/her personal interests with mathematics. It should be introduced at the beginning of the course. As a course progresses teachers are expected to highlight areas within the syllabus which leads to exploration topics. 

A student is better prepared to inquire these open ended problems when they are encouraged to do small explorations, to mark sample explorations, to write smooth mathematical writing and they are given required help in terms of appropriate technology and guidance for exploration.

An applied stimulus may lead to modelling tasks and a mathematics stimulus may lead to investigations. Here I am not expecting students to find new mathematical discoveries. Rather, I am looking forward to see a student engages himself/herself to explore, to reflect and  to communicate using mathematics learnt in the classroom and beyond. 

A probable sequence of events towards final work could be
 introduction to the task>research and seek information> students decide the topic and focus> work on explorations> first draft>teacher gives feedback> students finalise after feedback.  It is  very important to store all the sources from which ideas are drawn in order to cite them as expected. 

All candidates must be aware that this task may turn out to be difficult to develop a topic that is not at a suitable level of mathematics. It is therefore recommended to pick topic wisely, so that good marks can be obtained, is doable within the given time frame,  can be reported in approximately 6–12 pages.

[Notes taken from the Helsinki IA workshop
Jarmo Hurri]

Introduction to Functions(real valued) - Points noted(Pathways School Noida, India)

Today as we started talking about one of the most important concepts of mathematics, namely  functions, many different questions were asked. what is a function? What does it mean to evaluate a function? what is the essence of learning functions? or do we have any application in day to day life?

A function is a relation. It is a rule, an association between two sets called domain and range. Elements from domain are plugged into the function and in return function produces elements of range.  One example of a function from economics, the cost functions which was formed as a combination of  fixed cost and  variable cost helped students to understand areas of application( also dependent and independent variables). Few more examples came out in the process, parking charge is related parking time, weight is related to age etc.

Students have found that there are several ways by which a function be represented. They are graphical, formula, order pair,  tabular and mapping. Next question that arise from here, are these forms of the same function represent a function same way? (TOK). After questions and counter questions, it was established that order pair, tabular and mapping can represent only finite number of points out of whole domain and range of a function but  formula and graph represent a function in a better way. Formula being the strongest of all of them.

To find domain and range we need to make sure that we can not  have zero in the denominator, can not have negative sign inside a square root and logarithm of a negative number is undefined.
Thank you all my grade 11 MATH  HL students, Keep enriching yourself.