Real Solutions to Real Problems: Middle School Students Save the Day
July 27 - July 31, 2009
Math Teachers Grades 5-8
Instructors: Dr. Kathleen Fowler, Associate Professor Mathematics
Dr. Aaron Luttman, Assistant Professor Mathematics
In the North Country, we are surrounded by everyday problems that don’t necessarily have everyday solutions. If Sally lives one mile from school, does she really have to get on the bus at 6:30 AM? Is the water flowing through the local river polluting our drinking water? How do we keep the roads snow free when the county has already used up its plowing budget? These problems have in common that middle school mathematics can be used to understand, analyze, and propose solutions to them, and middle school students are the ideal mathematical consultants! In this collaborative STEM summer institute, we will work together to develop teaching units centered on problems of everyday importance with links to the NYS Standards in the middle school classroom.
Studying open-ended problems from our communities and applying fundamental concepts learned in the classroom give students a deeper understanding and appreciation for the material they are learning. By implementing teaching methods that encourage our students to develop their critical thinking skills and construct their own thought-processes for attacking problems, we actually give them a meaningful environment within which to use and improve their computational skills. Project-based learning, particularly when the projects are focused on issues that students relate to, improves student learning, both conceptually and computationally, while simultaneously motivating students to attack other problems around them.
In this workshop we will develop examples and projects, both uniquely mathematical and interdisciplinary, which can be implemented directly in the middle school classroom. We will also show how these projects are an innovative and successful technique for improving learning outcomes on the material covered by the state standardized tests.
