The time has come to put all of the ideas and thoughts that we have been discussing into action. After finding our inspiration from Dan Meyers and deciding on our goals of the project, it was time to create and implement our ideas.
Goals For This Project:
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To inspire curiosity in students about math in the real world.
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To make problem solving come alive.
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To encourage mathematical conversation.
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To grow a community of teachers and students who share their excitement about math in the real world by contributing and exploring perplexing real world math problems.
Looking at our goals allowed us to focus in on the standards that we wanted to address from the Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Practices. We believe that the perplexity problems that we are developing will allow students to be able to achieve these standards and become proficient math learners.
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Standard 1: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
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Standard 2: Reason abstractly and quantitatively
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Standard 3: Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
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Standard 4: Model with mathematics
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Standard 5: Use appropriate tools strategically
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Standard 6: Attend to precision
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Standard 7: Look for and make use of structure
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Standard 8: Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning
With these is mind, I was ready to get started on my project. I first needed to create the problems that I wanted to use with my students. I decided initially to keep the word problems related to the unit of study that the students were focusing on at the time. I started to build my base of problems on our Wikispaces Classroom page Real World Math. Finding Solutions. I enjoyed learning to navigate a new platform in which I can share my learning and project development with others.
Image by Enokson
I must say that making these problems has been more difficult than I imagined. Trying to come up with appropriate real world problems that are applicable to third graders, videoing them and using a format that they can understand has been a real challenge. Having now made made a few problems using google presentation and iMovie the process is becoming easier and I am enjoying the challenge of making the perplexity problems. I found that the three part process that we decided to follow created a nice framework to follow. Depending on the concept and problem that I created for the students, there were some differences in what was contained in the different parts but the framework remained the same for all problems. I will also continue to add to the data bank of problems as we move through subsequent units.
As I look to begin the implementation phase with my students and then continue to use the perplexity problems in my classroom, I am keeping in mind that I might find the need to tweak the process that I am following and what I have created to meet the needs of my students. I am excited for the upcoming launch to see how the perplexity problems are received by my students and how the problems are able to stretch their thinking.