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.

Finally!

I finally got the custom tool option to work for number 4 of explore more on page 101. I can now construct a string of successive midpoint triangles very quickly. Woohoo!

Masters Project

Right now I am torn between three ideas for my masters project. I thought it would be a lot of fun to create a house in logo or sketchpad and animate it. However I did want to come up with a more original ideas too.

Another idea I've had so far is to create a series of Christmas tree ornaments that display relationships in geometry, like parallel lines, vertical angles, and concentric circles.

The last idea I had was to recreate a series of board game boards (such as checkers/chess, darts, Monopoly, and Clue) using geometric constructions.

Right now I'm not sure which idea I'm going to choose but I'm looking forward to the project. It's going to be fun!