This week in our math class we are continuing to present lesson-learning activities. This week a colleague of mine delivered a fascinating lesson on exponential functions. Throughout teachers college and during my undergraduate years, my education professors always stressed the importance of making a lesson relevant to students. A lesson needs to be engaging and relevant to the students so that they can use what they learned in the lesson in the real world. This week my colleague did a great job incorporating real world events and trends to the students that would be in the class.
During the lesson, the class was divided into small groups and there were stations set up around the class with different activities at each station. For instance, at station one, the students were given a scenario of a zombie apocalypse and had to identify how many people were infected after a certain period of time. Students were given counters to help visualise the infected every twenty-four hours. For me personally, this was a thrilling activity and way to learn about exponential functions. I always play zombie apocalyptic video games and have talked to students about this on several occasions. I think using zombies for exponential functions is a great idea!
In the next station, even if you did not know much about zombies and zombie apocalypses, you can still relate to the scenario because it was an internet phenomenon that went viral worldwide. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was a challenge that went viral on all social media platforms in order to raise money for ALS. Most people in the classroom would relate to this since most people took part in it. Not only is this topic relatable for all the students, but being in the groups and trying to figure out the problem together fostered student communication which is vital in any classroom. Voicing our opinions and getting to the answer together made the groups talk about their thinking processes out loud in order to consolidate on a final answer.
As a future educator, I learnt the importance of keeping things relevant to the students. Taking part in these activities, I was extremely engaged because I was genuinely curious as to how many zombies there were by the end of the day and how many people did take part in the challenge since the numbers seemed accurate from personal experience.
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