Nov. 14 Exit Slip -- Dr. Kathryn Ricketts

I really enjoyed having Kathryn in our class. Her insights into embodied learning expanded my views on what dance is and its role in our society and in our classrooms. I was surprised by the number of parallels we were able to draw between student attitudes toward math and dance (and the arts more broadly). Very rarely would a student walk into a Science class and say they are not a "scientist" -- of course they aren't, they're an adolescent. Yet, we often hear, "I'm not a Math person," or "I'm not a dancer." In class, we started to ponder the question of why this has occurred on such a widespread scale. Why do we think perfection is the bar of entry for math?

I particularly enjoyed our simulation of a curricular creator grant. My group with Caris and Manveen were given colored popsicle sticks and tasked with coming up with, as Kathryn calls them, "curricular suggestions." My first idea was a self-assessment/teacher feedback task where students could put a colored popsicle stick (coded on a scale of no understanding to complete understanding) into a box after a lesson according to how they feel about the day's content. Essentially, a simplified exit slip. My next idea was an "old school Kahoot." Since students can't use their phones in class, I thought a teacher could still run a Kahoot on the board, and teams could respond with the correctly colored popsicle stick. 

Manveen had a great idea about modifying a Jeopardy game, which addresses the common problem of students only picking categories they "get" in order to win. In this modification, the students would have a preset number of each color of popsicle stick. The colors would each be coded with a review topic or content chapter. The students would then "pay" for a Jeopardy question with popsicle sticks to ensure they answer a variety of questions. Caris' idea was to use the colors to represent rational, irrational, and transcendental numbers by being able to show patterns that either repeat or are random. The ideas from other groups were also really enlightening and I appreciated the effort we all put into the task.