Personalization of Problems
One of the biggest difficulties I have seen in trying to teach problem solving can be attributed to the problems themselves. Frequently, I witness students who are resistant to any word problem for a multitude of factors. Sentences and paragraphs are seen as belonging to English and history classrooms. A common complaint regarding word problems is that the situations they describe are unfamiliar to my students and possess little to no meaning for them.
The nature of problem context and how this context is attended to in instruction are
important considerations for word problems to make more meaningful
contributions to students’ learning of mathematics.6
Often I find myself struggling to help students visualize a situational story problem in the Integrated Math classes through the Advanced Placement courses despite the intent of the authors to provide real-life contexts that are also culturally sensitive to students’ backgrounds. Personalization of one-step and two-step word problems can be an effective strategy to increase engagement among Hispanic middle school students, particularly males.7 Research within the United States, as well as internationally, indicate that personalizing mathematics instruction can be an effective strategy to increase student mathematics performance.8
Participatory Budgeting at Overfelt
The inspiration for the theme of the collection of word problems for this unit (See Appendix A) draws from recent events at Overfelt. In the Fall of 2014, Overfelt’s chapter of the Californians for Justice (CFJ), a student organization promoting youth and minority involvement in social justice causes in California, worked with our school site council and principal to organize a community based participatory budgeting program to determine how $50,000 of the school’s discretionary general budget would be spent. The premise is simple: Allow those who will benefit the ability to choose how to spend our school’s money. The primary conditions were that projects to be funded needed to support Overfelt students and be within budget.
Our principal was willing to have Overfelt be the first public school in California to attempt participatory budgeting. What arose from this idea was dubbed Royals Rise Up!.9 Within the process, students, staff members, family, and community stakeholders attended public brainstorming sessions to develop project ideas that would address a need at Overfelt. There were nine finalist project ideas that were presented to the public with estimated costs and impacts promoted on campus and online (See Appendix A). After a public online vote, winning projects totaling up to $50,000 would be funded in the next year. Over one third of Overfelt’s students voted for projects to be funded in the first year.
As part of the process, stakeholder input was a key factor in determining the projected estimated costs for each project idea. The mathematical richness of this situation is evident, with the potential analysis of each individual project idea, combinations of project ideas, decisions on spending in total and within each project, as well as a variety of factors that can be considered when determining the number of students and potential impact of each project can have on the Overfelt community. Drawing upon a real-life scenario actively occurring and affecting the students attending Overfelt will hopefully increase interest in the context and the mathematics.
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