Snow Day! ... Not

So that was an interesting week. The city called a snow day for Wednesday the night before, but alas, there was less than an inch of snow by the end of the day. While I suppose I enjoyed my day off, watching romantic comedies, it also threw off our entire schedule for our math projects. Because we had no school Friday (for community day), and then we went on break! Unfortunately, this means that my students' project presentations are pushed to tomorrow. (So let's hope they did their work over break!)

We are doing a Movie Pitch Project to tie together what they've learned about exponential functions. It's an interesting project where they have to come up with their own idea for a movie, and then research other similar movies (either by genre or lead actor or whatever) in order to make a prediction for how their movie will do at the box office. It's really a clever idea. However, I feel that there is a fine line between scaffolding and supporting your students so that they understand what they're learning and spoon-feeding them answers. And through doing this project, I am starting to feel that the students didn't do a ton of their own critical thinking and problem-solving. We pretty much tell them exact where to find the information, how to calculate averages, and then how to create their own exponential function to describe the income of their movie. So it felt like the students didn't always really know why they were doing the calculations they were doing. I'm not sure they understand how they came up with their own function. Maybe the presentations tomorrow will help them tie it all together, but I do feel frustrated ending this unit not feeling like the students fully grasp exponential functions.

I am also worried that as we start linear functions this week, I'll end up doing the same thing. I feel like all this Math 3 course is about is skills. And sure, if the students memorize these skills and procedures, then they'll ace the MCAS, but I'm not really sure what they'll have learned. I need to figure out a way to pull it away from skill-building a little, or at least I need to find a way to incorporate the thinking back into it. I want more students to ask "Why?" And I guess that means I need to be asking the same question.