The unit planning, so far, isn't going badly, it's just not going. We've been having a lot of trouble with the essential questions. It's been very hard to come up with anything more specific than "Why do I need to know math?" or "When will I ever need this?" To me, it seems like too much of a stretch to describe the various professions in which math is necessary and how math is used in those professions, and to create a unit around a specific profession or similar thing takes away so much of the choice that seems to be so important to students for this type of unit. Giving options (in this particular example) would involve a knowledge of different math-related professions that it would take a long time to acquire.
Basically, we're having trouble coming up with essential questions that are both valid within the field of mathematics and interesting enough for students to care. I think we could use some guidance.
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What about trying to find ways to intergrate math into other subject areas that way they can see that importance. A great intergration can actually be physical education. You can easily take concepts learned in math and have students apply them in that setting. You would need to have agreement with the PE teacher to do that in a school, but that wouldn't be difficult to do. You can do that across all grade levels. Whether its addition and subtraction, with things such as outcome scores in sports, or doing probabilites, integrating the probabiltiy of winning with given statistics or probability of accuracy with shots in basketball. You could take doing angles and apply that to the trajectory (flight path) of objects thrown, kicked etc in relation to the force put upon. There are actually numerous ways to integrate math in PE if that is a consideration you might have. It gives the incentive for students to care because youre combining something of interest into what is being taught. That's just some food for thought and I figured I'd share that idea with you. And if you do want to do it and have questions, feel free to email me. =).
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