Thursday, March 1, 2012

For the Love of Math!

I had so much fun this week at my school site. I have been able to teach more and more parts of class. Today, I was able to teach my students about the sine and cosine graphs. I was able to bring in an example of connecting it a model that I had seen in a conference that discussed the feelings of a girl and a boy in a dating relationship. The more that a girl likes a boy, the more he doesn't like her, and the less that she likes him, the more that he likes her. So it ends up going along a sin/cos curve. While I shared this with students I actually got some to laugh, which feels really good since math doesn’t have to be serious. I also helped teach the geometry class that I am helping with since there was a substitute, so I taught them about why the interior angles of a triangle is 180 degrees. This proof is an old style proof that was generated in ancient Greece, and I think that teaching some of these older ideas are good to teach the reasons why things happen and where they came from. At the end of the day, I found that if you are passionate and love the subject that you teach, the students are willing to listen and understand it better. They see your enthusiasm and that you care about it, so maybe they should too.

3 comments:

  1. That is an amazing analogy! I am certain your students were engaged and interested. :) I agree with you that the more I observe classes, the more I see how much enthusiasm for a subject can help reach students and bring them in. Awesome job!

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  2. Nice job on that lesson. Although, had I been in your class I may have learned more about why girls don't like me as opposed to the math!

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  3. Terrific analogies for the class. Sounds like they paid attention.

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