I am not huge on mathematics. I've never felt that the traditional ways of teaching mathematics reach all students - they certainly didn't reach me. The concept of holistic teaching holds great promise for this area of education, with the hope that we can use social, employment, and language skills more within the teaching of mathematics to make the learning process easier for students who need to see the real-world application.
This is the first article I've created for this topic which actually uses a large deal of mathematics. Within this lesson, students will be "given" one million dollars - and work with the categorization of information, substraction skills, graphing, estimation, and related mathematics concepts to spend the money on a socially beneficial project (building a no-kill animal shelter, creating a community for battered families, etc.)
The concept of one million dollars becomes real for students through its real-world application as they increase social awareness and ideas of civics participation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What's in this Article:
· Teacher's Guide
Foreword
Objectives & Prerequisite Skills
How To Begin
· Student Activity, Step-by-Step:
Step A: Define the Project
Step B: The Project in Words
Step C: You Get To Choose
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Teacher's Guide:
This is a lesson which I'm highly excited about, in large part due to the success I've had with it and my own students. Working with teens in alternative-education settings is a difficult job; these are students who have failed in traditional educational settings, and largely expect to fail in any educational setting. Their literacy and mathematical skills vary so greatly that it becomes a two-way struggle: to provide meaningful and inspiring work, while making this work accessible to students of different learning levels.
The One Million Dollar Project is something that meets all these needs, which also makes it perfect for this topic- there is no need for grade levels, because it's so easily adaptable to any grade level. At the same time, it can help you to make the traditional educational setting a place where the students who generally end up in my classes can succeed, and make it through traditional schooling.
Hey - this lesson is paired equally between mathematics and civics, and I've already admitted I'm not big on maths; can you blame me for trying to make it
