May Q 450 Blog

When I read the Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, I’m   aware of how hard it could be for a woman of that time period to compete in the mathematics field. I believe that she must have overcome many challenges and prejudices against women mathematicians, especially when she is also Iranian. However, her interest led her down the road and she is never stopping. As noted, “Maryam’s work was driven by a certain pure joy”. Anyone could be a mathematician regardless of their age, gender and ethnicity. For the stereotypes, scientists are usually men, middle-aged men... with heavy glasses. They tend to be a little bit nerdy... I think it’s almost the same for mathematicians, except that mathematicians are even more unsociable and stay alone more often. Neither of these professions has many women in them. Well, stereotypes always say that some people are not good at something but it’s not the case.   When Mirzakhani was in sixth grade, in Tehran, a teacher discouraged ...

  1.      Define your question Search Topic: How to create a productive and healthy learning environment?   2.      Analyze your topic into concepts Concept A Concept B Concept C Factors that affects student’s   level of attention and efficiency in learning. Physically, emotionally,  psychologically SEL Students’ emotional responses to the class and to others How students could manage their own emotions / identify other’s emotions and deal with them correctly  (mutual relationship between students) External factors (family situations ,socioeconomic status, etc ) and whether or how we should deal with them.   I noticed in my high school that teachers are not doing a great job in engaging the students to learn or effectively transmit the knowledge. As a new teacher I’m also worried about not being able to m...

 In today's class, I learned how to make the rope with some grass. We also watched a video showing the Indigenous people making ropes out of the natural resources to build a bridge. It is amazing how people could use these materials to live better. This also makes me to think about whether we really need to use so many modern materials which are hard to decompose. I think today's lesson not only integrated Indigenous knowledge into the classroom but also makes the lesson more fun. If we use this type of learning in our own classroom it should be more effective than just asking the students to sit and take notes every time. Even if we could not use this method in the majority of the classes, we could at least use this for several classes to enhance student learning, build connections, boost their interest in doing math,  and raise their awareness of the Indigenous culture at the same time. 

 To respond to Group 4: Is doing the math without hand work or bodily learning effective? -Not always, it depends on whether the connection between the craft and math has been made clear. It is not always effective because some students may not see the point or feel like it’s not effectively using their time and lose interest. For example, factoring might be best shown on the board rather than using bodily experience because it is easiest that way and faster. I could agree that for some of the concepts it may be easier to write it on the board, but bodily learning experience should be an essential part of learning in math. Due to the lack of these experiences, the current math classrooms are almost always based on things written on the board. This makes the students think that math is unrelated to real life and is not fun at all. It also is unfair for kinesthetic learners who learn the best when manipulating /touching materials. I think doing math without bodily learning could be e...

  "The key items of these agendas are indicated with buzzwords such as “cost effectiveness,” “ learning outcomes,” “performance evaluation,” “achievement levels,” “ instructional productivity,” and “user satisfaction.” Contemporary policy perspectives tend to be results-driven and accountability based. The point is that these orientations, discourses, and perspectives do not adequately reflect the ways that teachers and students experience the pedagogical being and daily tasks of teaching."   This presents the problem that teachers have to follow these concrete learning outcomes and aim at user satisfaction while these do not represent the daily interactions between the teacher and the students. There is a difference between the two, so nothing on the curriculum guide tells the teacher what to do in an actual classroom. To be tactful, the novice teacher has to think for themselves. One has to be reflective before, after, and even on the spot, in order to improve. This rel...

  1) What are your "student bird" and "teacher bird" thoughts about assigning percentages or letter grades in the assessment of student work? What do the grades indicate? How are they arrived at? Whose purposes do they serve? What are positive and negative aspects to giving grades? to be assigned grades by an instructor? I think assigning percentages or letter grades are just a measure of how the students grasp the essential knowledge (about a math concept, or about how to solve a problem). It is more straightforward for math courses than other courses such as English, because when you can solve a problem correctly, you certainly do have an understanding of the concept/problem type. Grades indicate the level of understanding. They also indicate how quickly one can solve the problems, for the tests usually have time limits. They serve as a sign of achievement, at least partly, if not accurately. They serve as a sign of competition, for sure. Students compare thei...

In the discussion group we talked about how intuition could be involved in math/science education. We talked about how math is sometimes called art by mathematicians , and art is directly related to spirituality because it involes intuition, imagination, and God-given inspirations. We also talked about how we kind of have an intuition of how the question goes (in which direction) and we use that intuition to help us find the answer. For example, when looking at a geometry problem, with accumulated practice , we would have an intuition of how we should solve the problem and we could go into that direction to experiment with our methods. We also talked about how we do not want to instill too much spirituality into our students' mind because that seems not an appropriate thing to do. We could expose them to these different ideas and concepts but we should not "teach" them. We should let them decide for themselves as to which concepts/ ideas they want to believe.