This course will build on your understanding of the processes and complexities of rate-of-change and function, as well as approaches to inquiry-based teaching as applied to concepts in physics and chemistry. Our goal is for you to acquire new knowledge and reasoning abilities that you need to prepare your students for success in mathematics, engineering and other areas of science.
Classroom Rules of Engagement:
Our goals are, in addition to developing meaning about big ideas, you also become more powerful in your communication and reasoning abilities. As a result, we will place emphasis on our enacting “rules of engagement” that will support your development in these areas. We will be stressing that you:
1) Speak meaningfully—express complete ideas, focus on quantities and relationships, provide rationale for actions and make connections.
2) Exhibit intellectual integrity–base your conjectures on a logical foundation; don’t pretend to understand when you don’t.
3) Strive to make sense—persist in making sense of problems and your colleagues’ thinking.
4) Respect the learning process of your colleagues—allow them the opportunity to think, reflect and construct. When assisting your colleagues, pose questions that will help them construct meaning, rather than show them how to get an answer.
Homework:
Weekly assignments will include problem-solving tasks as well as reflection on your understanding, practice, and student thinking. The homework is intended to promote new mathematical reasoning abilities in a physical science context and to promote understandings that will be useful to you as a secondary mathematics or science teacher. This should provide useful knowledge for your quest to use mathematics as a tool in exploring scientific phenomena. Please submit 2 copies of your solutions to the problem-solving portion of each homework assignment on the day of the following class. Your reflection responses shall be submitted through the course website using ASU’s Blackboard system. Grading in each category will be on a 10 pt scale. Any assignment that is given a score lower than 7 may be resubmitted the following week for reconsideration (maximum revised score = 7).
Final Project:
Members of your PLC will work on a project to develop a lesson, the goals of which are listed below:
- To engage you in a process of designing, teaching and reflecting on the effectiveness of an investigation (i.e., a lesson) that connects inquiry to mathematics;
- To support you in translating your current understanding of the concepts of Project Pathways to classroom instruction;
- To provide a basis for developing general strategies for instructional change;
- To support you in providing coherent and substantive instruction to your students.
Modules
 
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