ULTIMATE STEM: The Book My Biography: Delora Washington teaches at Corliss Early College STEM High School on Chicago’s south side. She has been teaching math and/or French for about 16 years. She has served as math department chair for several years.
My Amazing Teaching Moment:
Background: In class the first day, students completed an activity where they started with an equilateral triangle and by connecting the midpoints of the three sides of the triangle, they created a similar triangle with 4 smaller triangles inside the big one, 3 upwards facing and one downward facing. They continued this recursive pattern for 2 more levels, then analyzed the similarities and differences between the different stages of the process. They ultimately created Sierpienski triangles using this method. The lesson hoped to extend these fractal triangles to area and fractions by finding out what fraction of the area of the original triangle was occupied by one upward facing smallest triangle at each stage. My students did not make the connection so I created an assignment to help bridge between the book and what my students understood and needed to learn.
Amazing Teaching Moment: At the next class session, I started by giving the students dot paper to recreate the 1st three stages of the triangle, count the total number of small triangles that would fit in each stage, then they shaded in one of the new triangles and wrote a fraction to represent the area occupied by the small triangle at each stage, stage 1, stage 2, stage 3. Next, they worked in groups to determine the area of 1 of the smallest triangles at each stage if the area of the beginning triangle was changed along with finding the area of several triangles at the same stage. The lesson then extended into solving word problems like the one that follows: If the Stage 0 figure has an area of 8, what is the combined area of one of the smallest upward-pointing triangles at Stage 1, plus two of the smallest upward-pointing triangles at Stage 2, minusthree smallest upward-pointing triangles at stage 3?
It was amazing to see my students working through the process and then tackling the complicated word problems in the class assignment without giving up. I knew that they were building their bridges of understanding when they started correcting each others' errors and catching the late students up on what they had missed. Those that complained or missed the activity were told by other students that it looks hard, but it is actually pretty easy. They told their absent classmates that all you have to do is create a fraction using the given number of triangles for that stage divided by the total number of triangles in that stage times the original area, then add (or subtract) that with the calculation for the next stage of the triangle until you got to the end of the problem. After that, work the fraction calculations by hand, in your head, or with a calculator to find the final solution. They even related everything to the triangle activity that we had completed the prior day and showed them what we were talking about in the assignment. When we got to the end of the week assessment, a brief reminder was all they needed to get them ready for the assessment. They retained their knowledge and went on to continue building on it.
The following 5 Big Ideas are the end result of a brain-storming session where the 5 members of my STEM group each described their Amazing STEM lesson to the group and we analyzed the 5 lessons to determine what characteristics they all had in common. 5 Ideas For What Makes an Amazing STEM Lesson:
1.) Lessons that have the teacher as a facilitator open the door for students to guide their own learning and take the lesson in a direction that best serves students’ needs.
2.) Students learn best when they have confidence and support to explore or expand upon their learning. This is when teachers see the most “aha” moments.
3.) It’s important to motivate learners to think about how they can apply what they are learning and give students choices in meeting the learning objectives.
4.) All lessons used tools and/or technology as supplemental materials to increase student engagement and understanding.
5.) Lessons provided students with problems and allowed them to use creative outlets (drawings, cartoons, software, Socratic seminar, solar car) to take charge of their learning.