Sues Curriculum and Instruction

Read through my blogs, my view is widened. This class offered me more opportunities to read and involve different methods to deliver math ideas. First, I learned about how to construct and manage my lesson plan and unit plan which I will use later. I learned from my team members when we were working together to make a lesson plan  Although it is only 15 minutes lesson, we exchanged our ideas and had a good result. The unit plan is more challenge for me. Fortunately, my classmates helped me to collect information and supported me lots. I am appreciated for their caring. The unit plan needs to include different factors, such as indigenous context, environment factors and culture diverse, social structure. This unit plan pushed me to think out of the box, to think more about educate a people, not only math content.  Second, the class shaped my own view.  Math is fun. We plan puzzles. Each puzzle has different approaches, and all worked well. I would like to share my feelin...

Upon review of the blog from this term in this class, I find a nice selection of teaching philosophies and styles discussed in the articles.  The articles suggest ways that we can direct our own teaching practice and give some examples of how a method has been used in the past.   In addition, we reflect on our own reasons for choosing math and our reasons for becoming teachers.  Finally, there is a nice selection of reflections from my own practice teaching (micro teaching) that are interesting to look back on. Finally, there is the most fun and interesting ideas for math puzzles/riddles that I solved or at least tried and that I can use in my own classroom to stimulate discussion and spur creative math thinking. All and all an interesting selection of resources to have for future use.  Thank you.

This was a very interesting question but I could only get partway through.  I numbered each bottle of wine from 1-1000.  Then, with 10 rats, I knew that we could group the bottles into groups of 100's, with 1 group of 100 for each rat.  So rat 1 would have bottles 0-100, rat 2 would have bottles 101-200, and so on.  In this scenario, I could test 100 bottles of wine with 1 rat so that I would be left with 900 bottles of 'safe' wine.  But this isn't what the question ask.  But then I was stuck. I have since learned that we can solve the problem using binary numbers.  To start, label the bottles in base 10 representation 1-1000 again, but this time, also label them in binary.  The rats represent the digits of a binary number: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512. For each bottle of wine, pour one drop of wine for each 1 in it's binary code in the appropriate rat.  After an hour, the dead rats/live rats will reveal a pattern showing which b...

To begin, I especially liked the sentence ' No matter how determined we are to extend our grids, we must eventually bow to the gentle but insistent curvature of the earth.    This is a beautiful statement - nature overpowers and will win every time in it's simple, graceful but forceful way. 2 or 3 'stops' I had in reading this: things that stopped you, surprised you, etc. 1) I didn't realize how strict and unmoving a 'grid' system was.  According to the article, grids are inflexible and don't yield to the earth or nature.  Consequently, we can say also that while Euclidean geometry is promoted for its practical value, it fails in practicality unless limited to small uniform regions. 2) The delineation of the land based on the very practical methods relative to proximity to the river and slope of the land was again very natural and beautiful and simple and dare I say, perfect for the application.  There is no issue in this context of whether the lan...

The Unit and Lesson Plans can be accessed using this following links Unit Plan Lesson 1 Lesson 2 Lesson 3

EDCP 342A Unit planning: Rationale and overview for planning a 3 to 4 week unit of work in secondary school mathematics Your name: Susan Chow School, grade & course: Rockridge Secondary, Grade 10, Math 10 Topic of unit (NOTE: This should be a unit you will actually be teaching on practicum!): Chapter 7, Linear Equations & Graphs Preplanning questions: (1)    Why  do we teach this unit to secondary school students?  Research and talk about the following: Why is this topic included in the curriculum? Why is it important that students learn it? What learning do you hope they will take with them from this? What is intrinsically interesting, useful, beautiful about this topic? (150 words) There are lots of different reasons why linear equations and graphing linear equations is relevant in everyday life.  Linear relationships are all around us, even though students may not realize it.  For example, a functional relationship...

How you respond to the examples given here -- as a teacher and as a former student This article was very interesting.  As a student, I didn't question the language and drawings in the text books.  But I definitely felt the 'hedges' and certainty or uncertainty of some phrases.  I grew to like the commanding language of the text as it gave me reassurance that I was moving in the right direction.  Conversely, I don't like the idea at all for my future math students.  A teacher needs the language to be approachable - for the students not to feel as though they are 'pawns' so that they can have a conversation about the math and the options.  To that end, I missed out in my math study in that there was no room for conversation.  So I didn't develop the skills to speak about the math problems.  In this program, using the problem solving approach forces a conversation about the problem.  This extends student knowledge and understanding. What are...

I started by trying to figure out the number of weights I needed to get to 40 if I didn't have the constraint of 4.  I found that I could use 1, 2, 4 and 8 to get to 15.  And then to move forward in a similar fashion to get to 40, I needed 16 and 24 also. I also realized in working with the weights that I could be more efficient with the weights if I used both scales (some to add weight and some to provide alternative weight to make new weights). But how to I get to 40 with only 4 weights? So I started back at 1.  It looked like there was some number pattern at work - doubling to get 4 weights to reach 15. So I tried tripling for 40 and tried 1-3-9-27, and this worked. I was able to find only 1 solution to get to 40 using 4 weights.

5 people I met at Rockridge Secondary Terry Dooley - TOC for Math 9.  Irish, very festive.  42 years teaching. He was in the UBC program when he was just married.  He said that the program was quite stressful for him at the time - he was a newlywed and the UBC program was intense.  They had little money so everything together was quite stressful. He was an elementary teacher for 30 years at Ross Road Elementary.  He is 72 now. He’s been a TOC for 15 years. He is a very talkative and friendly man - a very nice guy. He mentioned that he knew many of the students from his many time TOC’ing at the school. Tracy  - Tracy is admin support at Rockridge.  Tracy helped me to get the wifi account set up.  She patiently sat with me for at least 30 minutes while their very slow internet tried to chug some life into my computer.  Tracy was very nice. She mentioned that she will miss their VP who is planning to leave in November. He prov...

I attended the Professional Day at the BCAMT meeting in Surrey.  It was a great meeting.  A couple things that were exceptional for me: 1) I was in a group with Frederic Gourdeau during one of the breakout sessions.  I didn't know who he was, but he was so smooth and beautiful with the problems we were working on.  He used such creative ways of solving a problem - not just hammering through but seeing the beauty and symmetry of the lines.  Frederic suggested that we were using the Cavalieri Principle to solve one of the problems.  Call me starstruck but I really enjoyed this group work.   I learned later the he spoke on problem solving at an earlier seminar.  I'm sorry I missed that one. 2) I also took a seminar and later met Peter  Liljedahl.  It was very interesting to participate in his seminar to experience the 'flow' firsthand.  I do wonder how/if one could use this strategy at higher levels of math.  I experience...

Two or three 'stops' you have in this article The biggest idea for me was the idea that the foundation of nearly all components of the school from the physical plant to the curriculum is really based on tradition rather than careful thought into what is really needed to develop 'holistic' adults.   Judging from Eisner's bio, before I read the article, I was expecting a long discussion on how the Arts were underserved in schools.  It was interesting to read how so many things were underserved, not just the arts. In addition, his point about the 'class' system and competition in school whereby some students get tracked to 'honors' classes and their grades count for more than a regularly tracked student.  I remember this system in my high school - students were tracked early, around 6-7th grade and then they stayed on those tracks.  I was tracked high for math and this carried with it a 'cache' that I remember I liked. Ways that this might...

In general I thought that our group did a relatively good job.  I had many takeaway's from our micro teaching but would like to point out just a few... 1) I think we had a lot of good content (definitely too much for just 15 minutes) and so we were happy with your suggestion to reduce the scope a bit.  Even after we paired it down a bit, I felt like we still had too much material.  My takeaway with this one is to really think about how much I can accomplish in a single lesson.  Especially if I add activities. 2) It would have been great if our group had had more time to coordinate the transitions and really go through the presentation - each person's role, activities, etc.   This seemed to be the area where our 'class' also seemed to think the our 'timing and pacing' were ok but not perfect. 3) More activities for the class - or better integration of activities with the presentation.   Personally, I forgot about activities until the very end as...

Here is our lesson plan for tomorrow's micro teaching.  The plan is a bit ambitious - our team is still working to consolidate it. https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_ELNbqpjlDr3S3QB8YEs5Ev5DmnBZ2Q/edit

The number diametrically opposite to 7 on a circle of 30 numbers is 22. I figured this out the old fashioned way of calculating the midpoint between 7 and 30.  I know that there are other, more creative mathematical ways of calculating this number. I'm sure there are other extended puzzles that I could give related to this one.  I could use a different shape perhaps or add a triangle into the mix in some form. We talked in class about giving students impossible puzzles.  My initial thought was that I would definitely give students impossible puzzles but after considering the comments of my classmates, I think it would depend on the mix of my class.  For a class of rather inexperienced math students (ie: grade 8 or 9), I would not give an impossible puzzle unless it was to some more of the advanced students.  Math is hard enough, I don't want to make it any more frustrating.  However, for students who have an interest, I think it would be challenging...

The article about Battleground Schools didn't give me 3 'stops' but rather just one big 'Aha, now I understand' moment!   As one of your older students, I have lived much of the change since the late 1960's.  I remember the new math, and the saying that the new math is old math, and is really a sham (I believe the word I heard back then was 'bunk'). But  I can appreciate how FEAR would have driven the push for putting more structure back into the math curriculum.  Where they (math content designers, the government?) failed, as the article discusses, is in the communication to the teachers and the parents of why this system was necessary.  Also a result of the fear, was a lack of broader thinking of what they want to achieve.  But perhaps this is your point - that the conservative and progressive ideas has been around for a while and is the heart of the issue. Another interesting component to me is the thinking about teaching fundamental math concepts...

We know that  every 2 used a dish of rice                         every 3 used a dish of broth and                        every 4 had a dish of meat between them. There were 65 dishes in all.  How many guests were there? I suspect there are many ways to solve this problem.  Here is one way: If the number of guests is x,  then  x/3 + x/4 + x/2 = 65 Multiply by 12 (common denominator) 4x + 3x + 6x = 780 x = 60 So there were 60 guests in total.