Chad,Where Is the Math?
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Where is the math?
Where is the math? I had only been teaching for a couple of months but I heard this question and similar ones posed since my beginning days as a math student. The very idea of going up to a vendor and asking him where the math was did not seem that outrageous. Or did it? I applaud risk taking among my students. As a new teacher, everything I do holds some sort of risk. The idea to use the story plot was a successful risk for me as a teacher. I want to show my students that the best thing about risk taking is the discovery in the outcome. One can always learn from the academic risks one takes on. As it applies to matrices, I had my own insecurities about the information. The biggest challenge I had was making sure the information that I had concretely in m my mind became clear for the students to process. Using the story of the Lauren Hill vendor made the math clear and concrete in a more effective way than a more abstract explanation.
Working with matrices requires a certain level of organizational skills. Some students grapple with placing data into columns and rows. Even as I placed the information on the board, I was careful to make sure I modeled good form, which was neat and orderly. Teachers may forget those little things. If something is haphazard and messy on the board then the students may have the tendency to think that the idea is of lesser value. It is a possible chain reaction to math disaster!