Math Staff Time (T1W3)

Fredrick shared with all a lesson on Probability with the use of poker cards which was inspired by the movie "21' that he had watched. Interesting lesson which captivated the interest of his pupils but as an educator he still need to be cautious not to promote gambling in his class so as not to arouse the dissatisfaction of parents. That's the life of a teacher, to inculcate not only knowledge and skills but values too.

The sharing also raised a probability problem. The problem is a game that requires one to guess which door out of three (say A, B & C) that has for example the car behind it while behind the other two are only goats. When the participant guess one door, say A, the tester will open one other door, say B, which has a goat, and ask the participant if he/she wishes to change his/her mind on his/her choice to door C. The probability of switching the choice and winning the game becomes higher. In fact, in this case, probability of door C having the car becomes 2/3 and not 1/3 anymore. Hence, teachers had a small discussion on why it is so but most were still not convinced with the explanation for the 2/3 probabiliy of changing choice that one of us came up with. But it sets most of us thinking through all the possible explanations that we can have.

It was indeed a good sharing for the day! I will try to get teachers to share their innovative ideas during Staff time more often :)

Lesson Reflection Blogs

Quite a no of teachers in the dept have started posting their reflection blogs and I tried to read as many of them as possible and of course give some comments as much as I can. Still notice a no of them have not done so. May have to think of a way to get them to do it weekly.

Though a certain amount of time needs to be spent on reading the blogs and commenting them, it is quite fun and rewarding. I feel that posting reflection blogs does help us to get to know what others are doing in their classes and also getting feedback from others who commented in our blogs does help in developing and motivating us in our teaching. This is a good practice but not easy to sustain unless one has a right mindset that it is not an additional chore to what we are already doing.

Reflections - Math Dept (1st Math Dept Meeting on 6 Jan 09)

Had a dept meeting on 6 Jan 09 at 2.40 pm in the staff lounge. It was held there due to the availability of wireless network. I had wanted to show all math teachers how to assess math dept stuff upload in the school's google intranet but did not managed to do so as more than half of the teachers were not present for the meeting :( Hence, I proceeded with the plan of getting all those who were present to set up a blog for themselves so that they can use their blogs for lesson reflections. This is still in experimental stage.

It was quite an adventurous session as many of us were first time to create a blog of our own and some of us not so IT savvy :) I felt good as it kind of brought us closer as a team because in the process there was much laughter and jokes going around. There was no pressure of getting expected MSG or any form of stress to get work done. Hope my sentiments were right ;)