Horizon Report Trends in Education (2017)

Introduction

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” This quote from Benjamin Franklin is one of my favorite quotes. It inspires and encourages me while also reminding me what the ultimate goal of being a teacher is: to involve students in their own learning. It’s so easy to get caught up in the standards of a class and making sure you’ve “taught” it all instead of focusing on really promoting student learning. The Horizon Report discusses six trends that can really help teachers involve students in their learning and help them be successful in school and life. Below, you will see how specifically, three of those trends currently or in the future will influence how I present and teach math to my high school students.

Advancing Cultures of Innovation and Deeper Learning Approaches

Both the advancing cultures of innovation trend and the deeper learning approaches trend are concentrated on building critical thinking skills in relation to the real world. Examples of this in action are collaboration, project-based learning, problem-solving, and creativity. These two trends I believe are really important in a high school math class setting. Critical thinking is an extremely important part of understanding math. With that said, I try to incorporate critical thinking into my math classes in a variety of ways. One example of this is by having students complete discovery lessons. Since there is a lot of rules and formulas in math, students tend to want to memorize them and not actually understand them. Having them complete discovery activities allows the students to solve problems and work through scenarios that allow them to write the rule themselves. This also puts their learning in their own hands instead of having me up at the board just telling them the rule and them copying it down. Another way this trend influences my teaching is in the creativity aspect. I used to think it was hard to incorporate creativity into a math class as it’s mostly numbers. However, through projects I’ve given my students, it’s allowed them to really bring their own creativity into their understanding. From having to find examples in the real world of shapes for Geometry and take selfies with them to having them write a trigonometry storybook and draw out their story with it. This gives students the opportunity to take what they’ve learned in my classroom and creatively apply it on their own.

Growing Focus on Measuring Learning

Within the growing focus on measuring learning section of the Horizon report, the statement about there being an overemphasis on state and standardized tests that take away from the instructional time really hit home for me. One of the math courses I teach is Algebra 1 which in the state I teach in, has a state test at the end of the year. If I’m being honest, this state test does add a lot more pressure to the class. Throughout the year there is this battle of trying to cover all the standards before the state test while also trying to go at a decent pace that focuses on the student’s understanding of the concepts. With this being a freshmen course, a lot of times it’s difficult to start where we are supposed to because of the lack of information they have retained from middle school. I always find myself having to reteach material that according to the standards, they should already know how to do. This tends to add a lot more stress to the planning.

All of these thoughts influence my plans on how I teach and present the math material to my students. With every day being so significant in a class that has a state test, it’s important for me to measure my students’ learning in a way that is beneficial for both them and me. I want to be able to see what knowledge them come to me with, how they’re retaining the material I teach them overtime, and overall to monitor their progress. A way I’ve been able to do that this year is through two programs my school has started using. The first one is called Algebra Nation. Within Algebra Nation, there is something called the “On Ramp” which allows students to answer questions that place them where they are at within the curriculum. From there, they are able to watch video lessons and answer questions to move up through all of the material. This has been a huge help specifically in my class that I teach that has students who struggle with math. It’s a way that they can all learn at their own pace and gives me a way to measure their learning at the same time. A second program my school has been using is Mastery Connect. This program has a question bank that makes questions very similar to state and standardized tests. I can choose multiple standards to give them and test them on. After they take a test I’ve made on it, they are placed into one of three levels on each standard assessed. The three levels are needs remediation, near mastery, and mastery. This allows both the student and myself to see what standards they grasp fully and what standards we need to discuss more. Both of these programs have influenced the way I monitor and measure student progress this year and is also allowing the student to monitor themselves as well.

Rise of STEAM Learning

The rise of STEAM learning trend definitely is important within my content area since mathematics is a part of the name (STEAM – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). I find STEAM learning to be such a great way for students to learn within in my content aread, however I find it hard to do within my classroom right now. The school I teach at is not a 1:1 school, but as of next year all students wil have their own chromebooks. I believe that once students all have their own form of technology to use within my class, it’ll make it a lot easier to incorporate STEAM learning strategies. Through reading this report though, it is reminding me of ways I could promote this type of learning without using technology when my students don’t have access to it. That is through the integration of visual arts. I have students draw out representations of math problems that we do, but to have them take it a step further and visually create something of their own to represent a topic they have learned in my class seems like a great thing to try in the future.

Conclusion

In the end, I think all six trends are great ways to influence my classroom in a positive way and I hope I’m able to incorporate the four I discussed above in even more ways than already listed. I didn’t specifically discuss the influence of two trends above as they aren’t able to influence my teaching as much right now or in the near future. Those trends are the redesigning learning spaces trend and the coding as literacy trend. There are small ways I redesign my students’ learning space, but with my classroom being so small and only having access to students’ desks, there is only so much I can do as of now. We have them in rows some days, in groups/stations other days, and sometimes we even make a circle with them. However, I wouldn’t relate those being what the report described as “mobile, flexible, varied, and connected.” In the future though, I would love for my classroom to move that way. The coding as literacy trend I didn’t specifically discuss either because as stated above, my students don’t have much access to technology yet. After we go 1:1 next year, in the years to come maybe that will be one trend I will be able to try within my classroom.

All in all, these trends relate to the quote I started this post with. They all are ways to help involve students in their own learning and understanding. I strive to continue to incorporate ways to do this within my own classroom using the trends discussed above.

References

Freeman, A., Adams Becker, S., Cummins, M., Davis, A., and Hall Giesinger, C. (2017). 

MC/CoSN Horizon Report: 2017 K–12 Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.