Class Discussion: Relate Soda Ban to Conent Classroom

                 Today's class was interesting. There were two parts to the class structure. In the first part we were in groups based on our content areas. In these groups we discussed how we would incorporate the soda ban into a lesson plan. We had to come up with learning objectives and assessment. Some groups were able to form an idea of what a lesson, that met all of this criteria, might look like. After this my content group talked with another group to share the ideas we came up with. The second prat was to create our first podcast.

                 During the content group activity, I realized that the people in my stem group approached the same question in different ways. I liked working with others related to math because I was able to see other ideas and perspecitives that I could have easily adapted to my classroom. I had fun seeing the different ways people would use the ban. For example, I had not thought before to look at this issue from an economics stand point, but two of my group members had. As for working on the lesson plan, it took some time for us to get organized and to be able to hear everyone's thoughts. We ended up creating a google doc so that we all could see what we were discussing. This also helped us to be able to organize our thoughts and to see how much we had for a particular section. In our discussion we would talk about a point and then we would elaborate on that point without everyone knowing what to write down. The google doc helped with this. To help get us to think about what we wanted to do for our lesson we looked at eachothers blogs and discussed them so that we had a better understanding of the ways in which everyone looked at the question.

                   For our lesson we wound up with more of a research paper type of activity for the students. Our goal was to get students to think about a broad question and to create a more focused question for which to do their project on. We recognized that this may be hard for some students and we were prepared to have guiding questions to help them with their activity. The main focus we came up with was to have studetns to determine if the amount of soda would in fact decrease or if it would increase, ie. to see if the ban would be effective. One member of the group (Pete) came up with an idea as how to implement this idea in the classroom. Creatively enough this idea was dubbed Pete's Idea. The idea was to have students do the research and to form an opinion as to if the ban would be effective. Then, the students would spend one week where the lived as if the ban was taking place in their homes and record how much soda they drank. Then they would spend one week where the ban was not taking place and record their data. At the end of the two weeks they would compare how much soda their families consumed. They would then present their findings to the class. I liked this idea becuase it got students engaged in the material and helped them to see how this ban might effect their lives. It would also give them an idea of how to do research and how to interpret data.

               We later discussed what we did with a history group. I liked their idea on using prohibition in relation to the soda ban, although I was having trouble with this idea becuase prohibition "eliminated" all concumption of alcohol whereas the ban only limited the sizes of sodas you could by at restraunts, theaters, and the like. Their lesson plan was ectremely detailed and it was interesting to see how they planned an entire week around the ban. Mixing the two groups was frustrating at times, but it was interesting none the less.

            The second part of class we worked on our podcasts. I liked learning more about this, but I found it difficult to come up with something to say. I found this activity to be very useful since it is something that I have talked about doing for my class. I would also like to learn about doing some type of video casts so that I would be able to work out examples and have the students to see what I am doing when they are home and need a refresher.

"One of the endlessly alluring aspects of mathematics is that its thorniest paradoxes have a way of blooming into beautiful theories." ~ Philip J. Davis