Blaine Norris-Building Confidence with Calculators

Blaine Norris Article Review
Title: Attitude Adjustments: Building Confidence with Calculators
Author: Lesa M. Covington Clarkson
Source: This is one of the articles that Mary Kay found for us. I am unsure of the source
Summary: The author states that there is a gap between black and white students on the National Assessment of Education Progress. And in order to reduce this achievement gap there must be high-qualified teaching and even higher expectations, culturally relevant mathematics environments, and 21st-century technology and curriculum. 1. Teachers of the 6
th grade in a 99% black elementary school with a 70% free and reduce lunch population used graphing calculators to instruct students in math. 2. Students used the graphing calculators to discuss patterns and data.
3. The calculators were used to interest the students in more sophisticated mathematics and the questions that could be answered using technology.
4. The teacher expected the students to do the higher level math, so the students assumed that they could do it to.
5. The students first became familiar with the calculators by entering numbers, performing operations, and then learning about the function keys.
6. Students first sorted m&m’s according to color before performing real-world tasks.
7. Students later searched newspaper ads for prices on similar makes and model of vehicles. They recorded and graphed the data. They could then predict reasonable prices for the given cars.
8. Students worked in pair and presented their finding to the rest of the class.
9. Once students could see how calculators could help them with data that they were interested in they could then move on to more abstract mathematics.
Analysis: I enjoyed reading this article. It presents the ideas that calculators can both motivate student achievement and point their thinking to higher educational goals. Many of the students would never have considered college or upper-level degrees leading to careers in technology or other advanced fields. Because the students were introduce to sophisticated tools at a basic and useful level they were able to gain confidence in solving real-world problems with them.
One thing I did not like about the article was its lack of detail in what the students were asked to do.