Inquiry Project Reflection

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Link to our slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bDJHtZL9BQwDMhn2-PH8_mP1kN1fD6aFyqrt2l7BjlQ/edit?usp=sharing

Reflection:

In this inquiry project, I learned a lot about the benefits of realistic mathematics education and developed many ideas how to teach mathematics with application to environmental education and climate change. I am inspired by the idea of teaching math outdoors in an outdoor amphitheater or garden space. I love being outside and hope it also can be valuable to students to help them retain information better; as shown in the literature. From my personal experience as a high school student many years ago, I enjoyed being part of the garden and working to build our school orchard garden from the ground up. I hope I get an opportunity to be the educator to help lead something like this in the future. This interest of mine leads me to see if I can develop a club or program where my students can take on environmental education initiatives in the school, such as raising awareness for lowering carbon footprint within the student body or advocate for more sustainable practices within the school such as cooking school lunches with locally grown food.

One idea for Inquiry 2 would be to explore further how to teach environmental education in different topics of mathematics. For example, I could focus on a topic such as trigonometry in the mathematics curriculum and develop a “unit plan” specifically for application of environmental education in trigonometry. Due to time constraints, we never got the chance to do our second interactive activity which involves exploring data of Annal US coal consumption from 1970-2020. We wanted our classmates to graph and analyze the equation for a fitted curve to extrapolate and interpolate information from the curve. This interactive activity is what we ultimately wanted to see more of in math classrooms so that students can develop a more concrete connection to environmental and climate change learning in mathematics with an example that is realistic and relevant to students.



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