Videos

I just got finished watching the side splitter video proof. Overall, I am very impressed with the students work. There were a few minor errors but the major ideas were correct. It's great to see that pre-service teachers are getting such great exposure to technology. I'm sure their students would much rather watch a proof created in sketchpad than one that the teacher writes on the board. And this is an idea that I will sock away for when I teach geometry.

Class on the 16th...

I really enjoyed last Monday's class. Much of the material was review for me but it was much needed review as some of my details on proofs are a bit fuzzy. I think the activities were great and are something I would definitely like to do with my class if I ever teach geometry. So overall, it was an edutaing class!

NCTM Research Chapters

I read both of the chapters from the NCTM book this week. Once again I am stuck but what a difficult job elementary teachers have. The idea of having to teach something as basic as using a ruler is mind boggling to me. Teaching calculus sounds like fun to me but teaching measurement sounds like a nightmare. I am very thankful that there are talented teachers out there who enjoy teaching things that I don't think I could.

Masters Project

Well, I think I have finally settled on a topic and it's not one of the original three ideas I had. I've decided to try to reproduce known fractals using sketchpad and maybe see if I can come up with some on my own. Since I have no idea what I will be teaching next year, I figured these would be fun to show my students in any class.

Reaction to Slavit Article

I really enjoyed the article by David Slavit. I think it was admirable that he wanted to create some abstract reasoning skills in younger students. The article also underlined the importance of discovering learning in mathematics. However it also highlighted how difficult it can be to allow time for discovery. The activities outlined are wonderful and allow students to form their own ideas about the principles of triangles and polygons. However the activities also show how much class time would be taken up by such activities. As outlined it would take several days to cover the congruence and similarity theorems. Unfortunately, teachers simply don't have the time to cover very many topics in this way. However I think it could be very beneficial to choose a few topics to cover in this manner because it allows students to make much stronger connections with the material.

Spring Break

I will be on spring break from around noon on March 6 until March 15. Only two weeks away! My only real plans are to go home to Illinois and finalize some wedding plans and have my first dress fitting! Besides that I hope to catch up on some work and some rest.

My reaction to the assigned article is ...

that the authors were right about many things. Students typically understand concepts much better when they are able to make real world connections, like with the sprinkler and the amusement park. However I think there was one aspect of the article that was absent that should have been present; how the activities went in the authors' classrooms.

I was disappointed that they choose not to discuss the students' reactions to the activities or the students' performance on the activities as compared to the more traditional assignment. I think it would have been interesting to do this a more of a comparative study. Students could have tried the more traditional activities and then the more real-life activities . Or have one class try one assignment and another class try the other assignment. This would have given the authors more concrete information about the success of less traditional assessments/assignments.