Complex Identities

OK, I admit it, I like 1970s worksheets.  I am comfortable with them anyway because it is what I grew up using in math classes.  It is good to come full circle and realize that our students will be at an advantage because we can give them a variety of options for learning and understanding geometry.  They can “play” with shapes on the computer or make drawings with a pencil on a piece of paper.  We can provide the definitions of the concepts first, or let them do some discovering before labeling the shapes.  We have more tools at our disposal and we need to get familiar with all of them and make them available to our students so there are as many entry points to math as possible.

The measuring activity was enjoyable too.  It was great to use a variety of everyday objects to “measure” the rectangle.  I appreciated hearing the different thoughts about why the graph of the measurements was linear.  It was a great way for me to deepen my own understanding of measurement, graphing, algebra and slope.  Nothing fancy required here, so it is very accessible.  This helps me as I have been concerned with the availability of some of the math software in our schools.

I really like the idea in the complex identities article where “helping our students become aware of their mathematical identifies can empower them to make that relationship more meaningful”.  My school is having a math week later this month and there was a staff planning meeting about it this week.  I proposed to my master teacher that our class have a math community building activity.  We would we talk about all sort of different mathematically related activities (the table in the article).  We then have an opportunity to have our students consider and talk about the activities that they are good at doing.

I will be reviewing some other math activities that we might include.  Some pictures of  the Fibonacci sequence and connections to nature are floating through my mind…..