Our group's actual intention (Ivy and I) for choosing the inquiry project topic of enriched learning is learning how to inspire and motivate students in math classrooms. We researched how we could make the math classroom more exciting and help more students enjoy learning math.
We learned about the mini-school history through this inquiry project, the many and varied available enriched learning programs locally. Most local schools have opened their own enriched learning programs and mini school program.
By interviewing mini school and regular schoolteachers, I learned that while mini schools and regular classes have similar pedagogy, mini-schools being smaller allows students to more easily participate and provide input in school management. Mini-school students are screened by entrance exams and interviews and have above-average academic performance and ability. The better caliber students help teachers to easily extend the teaching contents deeper and broader for students. When I was young, our school would divide the classes based on students' academic performance into accelerated, standard and slow classes. While this system does segregate students into different tiers and potentially social ranking, it helps teachers as they are working with students with similar cognitive abilities.
In my additional research on inspiring and motivating students in mathematics, I have found some excellent videos on inspiration and mathematics motivation. One video is "Math is the six sense" by Eddie Wu, a high school math teacher known for his passion for teaching mathematics and passing that passion onto his students. His talk is about how everyone has a sense of mathematics. Another video is about infinite patterns, which shows the beauty of mathematics through patterns.
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