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This module consists of three required activities. In the first activity, Community Walk/Community Visits, PSTs conduct one or more visits (including virtual visits) to the community surrounding their field-placement school. There are various options for these visits, depending on the particular circumstances of each methods site. These visits may involve posing and investigating a problem related to the community setting.
In the second activity, Lesson Planning, PSTs draw on what they learned from the community visits to inform their instruction. Again, there are several options for how PSTs might think about the implications for instruction, from planning (but not necessarily teaching) a problem solving oriented lesson related to the community visits, to planning a problem solving task (or set of tasks) that are related to the community visits and that might form the basis of a mathematics lesson.
The third activity, Debrief and Reflect, PSTs engage in a group discussion/debriefing of the project (which may include presentations of their lesson plans and/or problem posing activities), followed by an individual written reflection (to be completed in class as a quick write or out of class as a homework assignment).
Finally, this module also draws on a required activity from another module, the Getting to Know You interview in the Mathematics Learning Case Study Module (Activity 1). In this activity, PSTs conduct an informal interview with students in their field placement classroom to gather information about the children’s home and community experiences, the children’s knowledge of the community, and the children’s ideas about the use of/relevance of math in their community.