Fig. 342a

Our lesson plan can be found here  (co-taught with Billy and Daman Preet) The worksheet can be found here

Math education is never unbiased. The contexts of word problems in math classrooms present information from a certain perspective. For example, a question of a pizza box poses students as consumers who eat unhealthy food. Even if the question asked about a healthier food such as quinoa, or kale, there is a factor of a local/global impact - water usage and labour - from the consumption of these particular foods. Of course, information as such is left out of such a problem, and hence we unknowingly, we are teach our students to become ignorant consumers. Stocker presents a smorgasbord of lessons that discuss many social justice topics and provides a way for any teacher to apply to their curriculum. He advises teachers to start with a topic that they would feel comfortable discussing, and to go from there. Although this may seem harmless, it may soon become tricky to navigate if the teacher has not been well-informed of how to facilitate these discussions. It could become a sticky situa...

Yesterday, in small groups, we taught each other micro-lessons around a topic that was non-math/non-curricula. I decided to teach a lesson on a figure skating: waltz jump (on the ground) - Lesson plan in previous post. Reflecting upon the experience, I was a little nervous throughout the process, teaching a skill that I had done over and over again, but had not thought much about the learning of the process in over ten years. Although a clear lesson plan was drawn out, I did not review it as much as I should have, and smaller details were omitted. (Waltz jump along the arc of a circle and connects to the edges used.) My peers seemed to enjoy the task of learning about the skating boot, knee health, and performing the jump, and all written comments were positive. I ran out of material at the end, and as this was as far as I had done in figure skating, I wasn't entirely sure how to proceed from there. (This shows in two feed back forms that indicated that my area of improvement was...

Lesson Plan Date: 10/18/2017 Grade/Class: EDCP342A Length: 10 minutes 1. Measurable Objective(s): Students will be able to: Identify the edges on a skating boot/blade Practice a healthy use of the knee to bend and jump Perform a waltz jump on the ground 2. Required Prior Knowledge and Skills: • Walking • Balance on one foot 3. Review Needed: • None 4. Materials, Repertoire, Equipment needed: • Ice skates 5. Agenda: Ice Skate Anatomy Edges, Weight, and Momentum Jump Prep Completing the jump 6. Le...

As I read through Gerofsky's " Battleground schools: Mathematics education", it struck me to recall my mathematics education in New Zealand, and how much it pointed towards elements of the conservative and progressive approaches. I quite enjoyed mathematics up until the senior years of high school. However, at the university level, lectures and tutorials seemed to point to a conservative view. As I scanned down the table comparing the different elements of mathematics education (2008, p. 392-393), I found myself ticking off the assumptions belonging to the conservative column, although as Gerofsky mentions, this dichotomy is not always the healthiest ways to understand approaches to math education. However, it does reveal how much of my pre-conceived notions of mathematic education derive from my background as a mathematics learner, and how I now face a paradigm shift in the way I orient myself as a mathematics educator. In a bullet point that described who conservative...

Eisner sets out to explain the three curricula taught by schools, including the 1. Explicit curriculum - what is made public through course announcements 2. Implicit curriculum - the socialization through physical and behavioural structures of the school and classroom 3. Null curriculum - what is left out from our explicit curriculum Through his theory of implicit education, Eisner makes his case that is it usually more important for a student to study the teacher, rather than the course content, in an attempt to achieve a good grade. The students reads the environment created by the teacher to establish to determine how much effort they should put into a class, particularly in systems that use behaviour modification techniques. How is it that we should go about cultivating student initiative and to develop intrinsic motivation so that students find the joy of learning for themselves, rather than to please their community - teachers, parents, and peers - through their achievements...

 I took the TPI test twice, the first time through the lens of myself after my first year as a high school music teacher, and the second time as a mathematics tutor and prospective math classroom teacher.  Other than answering questions on the five perspectives differently, I also tried to vary my responses more dramatically the second time. Fig. 1. TPI results as a Music Educator   Fig. 2. TPI results as a Math Educator I would agree with the overall result that perspective that I find strongest is Nurturing; my greatest aim in teaching, no matter what subjects, is for students to develop a sense of confidence - the bravery to reach for goals, and the realisation that the capacity they have for impact. Mistake making is an important part of my teaching philosophy, particularly music where one's mistake is audibly heard by the rest of the group. It's imperative for my students change their mindset from embarrassment ...

Peter Gustainis and I worked together to recreate Felicia Tabing's Knotical . We created the 4 tiles digitally to represent her artwork presented at Bridges Math Art 2017, then arranged the tiles in the same fashion as her original block print.To extend this artwork, we incorporated colours associated with Andy Warhol's work with pop art, giving each tile a different gradient. This allowed for a clearer representation of the transformations (symmetry, rotation, translation) present in this artwork. As you can see in the color schemes below, the work almost has a complete rotational symmetry. As a challenge, we provided an activity where students were given a set of tiles and asked to represent 2 common knots - Solomon, and Trefoil - mosaically. Here is the link to our Google Slides presentation This project was a fun inquiry to the ways that we can teach mathematical concepts alongside concepts in aesthetics - the ways that mathematicians create art through vis...