Day4

__**Day 4 - Teaching Strategies - Constructive**__

I like the Fermi problems. They open the mind to all kinds of applications. It seems to me that the fact there is no wrong answer works well with the students terified of failing. For older students they can be modified to include a range in the assumptions, so they can provide an answer with a margin error.

I'm not sure about drama applications. Is math being included in drama clases? I am not a person with drama background, so I would need to do a lot of research and see more examples for this concept to take shape for me. I took a look at the Performing Math website and the ballet number was very beautifully executed. Math wise, however, it was a waste of time. I wasn't able to identify a single Math concept that came out of the presentation. There were dancers with numbers attached to their costumes, then the "negative numerals" came on stage. There was no interaction to mimic the mathematical concept. The negative numerals stole the pozitive numbers and only by finding the odd numbers in a square could they be retrieved. There is nothing mathematical in this, or, if it is, it escapes me. I have no idea how to find odd numbers in a square. I have no ideas how to find any kind of numbers in a square. A square is a shape and doesn't have container properties. At some point a 4 x 4 square composed by 16 smaller squares was presented on the screen. It wasn't clear if this is where odd numbers were to be found. No counting took place. No sort of solving the problem took place. Not even the order of counting of the 16 little squares. If the assumption is that each square is attached to a number, then the odd numbers will depend on the tile where the counting is being started from and the direction it is going. I agree that it is a nice thing that an effort was made to include something related to math in a dance piece, but I have to wonder what a student watching this will think: - math is about dancing - math problems are miraculously solving themselves - logic is not required when taking in a math problem - logic is not required when solving a problem - negative numbers are mean - I want to learn how to dance.

I liked the idea that was shared today at our table, about a minds on on equations, using scales, then explaining the equal sign as being the scale. (Or, just explaining what the word "equals" means in English).