With that said, for this blog, I chose Math III. One, I am a math teacher. Two, I really enjoy upper level math. So, if I was ranking these...I would say 75% involve critical thinking. You still see words like recognize, organize, understand BUT you also see communicate, analyze, explore, relate, interpret, etc. And those words imply some level of critical thinking in order to do that! NOW, with anything...you can just memorize and figure out the steps BUT most teachers do try to explain the why behind some of this...or they should!
I picked the following standard:
MM3G3.
Students will investigate planes and spheres.
a. Plot the point (x, y, z)
and understand it as a vertex of a rectangular prism.
b. Apply the distance formula in
3-space.
c. Recognize and understand equations of
planes and spheres.
Now, the reason I picked this is because it does seem to just be...OK...plot some points, use the distance formula and recognize the area of a plane, the area of a sphere, the volume, etc.! HOWEVER, you could totally apply these concepts to a globe. You could have students go in and pick dream destinations...Germany, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Paris, Venice, and so on! Then they could actually plot some points and use distance. They could construct 3-D artifacts to show this IN THE REAL WORLD! And some times it is hard for kids to "see" 3-D when trying to draw it out...so why not really do it! There are also several different softwares out there that could actually construct this for them.
So again, this is a concept that a lot of teachers could just say...OK let's do this, plot that, plug this in, etc. BUT they also could allow their students to go deeper! I think we are moving more that way...and I think there is a happy medium! So let's try and attain that!
