It was very interesting for me to observe how engaged you
all were in doing the various ratio and proportional investigations. Imagine
how much our students would enjoy this type of involvement. Sharon nicely
stated that since in our students’ minds mathematics is paper and pencil
calculations they do not appreciate the beauty and applications that involve
mathematics.
My take away from a day like Sat is to concentrate on how we
can bring experiences like these to our students in the classroom. How can we
help them experience ratio and proportion? How can we use the overhead or
opaque projector to replicate the rabbit, house, and tree exhibit…maybe set up
centers in the room so the students can move among various activities as we
did? We could make a center to enlarge an object as in Gulliver, another to
enlarge a cartoon from the newspaper to poster board size, another to play
around with inverse variation and, of course, one with direct variation.
I would love to read your thoughts on these ideas as well as
your experiences on Sat.
See you on Thursday,
Anne
