During my first practicum block, I was tasked to teach a mini unit on Obtaining and Operating a Vehicle to the Grade 11 math class. To prepare for it, I first looked up the overall and specific expectations from the curriculum. The topics and concepts that students will need to understand at the end of the unit includes:
calculating total costs (including additional fees) of buying a new vehicle
depreciation of vehicles
calculating monthly payments for financing and leasing vehicles
comparing information buying or leasing a new vehicle or buying a used vehicle
procedures and costs involved in insuring a vehicle and the factors affecting insurance rates
solving problems, using technology (TVM solver and spreadsheet), that involve the fixed costs and variable costs of owning and operating a vehicle
Summative Task (Assessment of Learning)
At the high school level, math is a very abstract subject and students often wonder why they need to learn the concepts that are not normally used everyday. The Personal Finance unit in the College/Workplace math curriculum is quite a useful unit as it teaches students real world applications. Throughout the unit, I make as much connections between math and real-life scenarios as possible to spark students’ engagement. For the summative task I created (with reference from math textbooks), students are taking on the role of an adult in the late 20s with an occupation chosen by random. They will look at three different cars that may be suitable. Using the information given, they will calculate the ownership and operating costs of the cars, and choose the car which best fits their budget. The idea behind this task is to imitate a real-life scenario, so that students feel that the task is relevant and useful to them, hence, be engaged with the task.
Lessons
For each lesson, I gave a 15 minute explicit instruction of the topic, which includes giving background information and solving an example question with detailed steps. The students would then spend the rest of the class working on practice questions. Each question has a slight variation, so that while students would use the same steps to solve the problems, they will need to think critically at how to approach each one.
Preparing and Executing the Unit Plan
At the beginning of the creating the unit plan, I realized that I am not the most informed when in comes to buying vehicles. In order to prepare a series of lessons to deliver, I had to research related information beforehand. Also, students in OTSS don’t use textbooks, so after my researching, I needed to create materials and worksheets from scratch. All of this preparation was quite time-consuming in the small window of time that I had.
As this is my very first practicum, I was nervous to stand at the front of a classroom and teach. I wasn't sure how my lessons may turn out or if the students will be receptive of my teaching. I was fortunate though that the class sizes in OTSS are very small (less than 10 students), so it helps me ease into the classroom setting and slowly build up confidence. Despite the small group, there is still a variety of learners (visual, kinaesthetic auditory). I tried to incorporate some visuals into my lessons, such as writing down my examples and solutions on the board and showing a video. For students who like to talk more than write, I let them participate/speak up more in class so that I can also assess what they know at the same time. One of the lessons involved calculating operating costs using the spreadsheet; an opportunity for students to be hands-on with math. Prior to this, none of them knew how to use a spreadsheet, and my lesson involved using formulas in a spreadsheet, so I wasn’t sure how the activity would go beforehand. Turns out the students picked up this new “skill” quite quickly, faster than picking up new math concepts. Some of them said it’s kind of like coding, which they might have some experience before.
As I get to understand the students more I find that I needed to continually adjust my expectations and unit plan schedule. Most of the students get stressed if they feel that they are not able to finish their work. I provided more scaffolding in the lessons so that students can fully understand the concepts and added work periods to give them extra time to complete practice worksheets. I think that being flexible is an aspect that teachers need have in order to respond to students’ changing needs.
Nearing the end of the unit (and having a good grasp of students’ work habits, pace and abilities), I felt that the summative task I initially designed may be too long for them. I consulted Liliane and adjusted the task by incorporating her advice. To prepare for the task so that the students don’t feel too stressed out, I created a review worksheet with questions VERY similar to the summative task. Some of the students needed reminders on the concepts and steps, but overall most of them were able to finish the worksheet within one class without too many problems. They also were able to finish the summative task on the the next day within one class. I would also call it a success that they feel confident in completing the task and didn't feel stress at all.
Details of my unit plan can be found here.
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