The basic principle of global learning networks is to connect classrooms in different parts of the world to work on common projects. In Orillas and CLMER GLN projects, this principle is taken further – participants explore ways in which these partnerships can promote dynamic and relevant investigations and be integrated into the curriculum within a framework of collaborative and critical inquiry and purposeful social action.

The "Connecting Math to Our Lives" Project results from a long-standing and continuing interest in using critical inquiry to relate curriculum content to students' individual and collective experience and to analyze broader social issues relevant to their lives. Project coordinators work with teachers to identify and share examples of activities which take students beyond the traditional descriptive activities found so often in textbooks to deeper levels of comprehension, critical inquiry and opportunities to act on what they are learning:

• to personal and interpretive activities in which students link curriculum content to their individual and collective experience
  
  
• to critical inquiry and analysis in which students engage in the more abstract process of critically analyzing the issues or problems that have been raised
  
  
• to creative social action in which students discuss and explore ways in which social realities might be transformed through various forms of democratic participation and social justice.
  

CLMER and Orillas GLN projects are both student instructional projects and professional development projects. Teachers collaborate and share through the network as much as students do! Everyone shares and develops new strategies for improving multilingual and multicultural learning, with added assistance from facilitators and invited online experts.

The theoretical framework described here influences every aspect of the math project. For example in the project announcement, activities correspond to the different phases of the theoretical framework. The project calendar presents a timeline for completing initial activities in the descriptive and personal interpretive phases and for urging teachers and students to engage in activities that challenge students to think critically and take action in their schools and communities. When project reports are published on the website, these too are organized by the phases of the project they represent. It's not always clear to teachers how to organize activities to promote critical inquiry and so the facilitators and on-line guests (bilingual math educators) provide ideas and feedback.

Click here to see the Math Project Announcement.

In the Math Project Announcement, you'll see that suggested activities are offered for each phase of the theoretical framework:

1. "What Math Means to Me" (Product: A math collage and accompanying paragraph entitled "What Math Means to Me.")

2. "Everyday Math in My Community" (Product: Report describing an interview. Or alternatively, student-written math story problems based on the ways their families use math.)

3. An Idea of Your Own to Connect Math to Your Day-to-Day Lives
   

4. "Statistics and Society" (Product: Analysis of a graph or chart showing statistical or numeric data --or of a survey you conduct--
   on a social, political, scientific, or environmental issue.)

5. "Promoting Equity at Our School Site" (Product: Report on the actions students have taken in their communities or schools to promote greater equity, including a brief summary of the data and analysis on which those actions were based.)

6. An Idea of Your Own to Connect Math to the Broader Society and to Issues of Equity.

The examples in this "tour" are organized to demonstrate activities that take students through these phases.

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