After teaching mathematics for several years now one thing has become immensely clear. Students require hands-on activities in order to apply their learning and display their full mathematical understanding. In a math classroom, this can be demonstrated in a variety of ways, such as creating art projects, building figures, or visually representing mathematical ideas with manipulatives such as Algebra Tiles. Unfortunately, I have also found that not every school comes equipped with the resources to supply and encourage more of these hands-on activities. It is also especially important to note that not all students should be expected to have the means to supply all of their own materials to be fully prepared for school. This project will not only help me support my students with those daily supplies that school has been designed to require but will also provide a strong base for supplies that will be used in a variety of projects and hands-on learning throughout the school year. Specific mathematical projects that these supplies will benefit include tessellation design and applying statistics to understand equity. Pencils, markers, rulers, scissors, glue sticks and protractors will allow students to apply their geometry skills by creating their own tessellating patterns. They will apply their understanding of angle measures (interior and exterior angles) as well as their understanding of basic geometric shapes and why not all regular polygons tessellate. Supplies such as the pencils, EXPO markers, and scissors and glue will aid algebra students in their work towards their Statistics Supporting Equity project. Students will be doing their own research and will need to visually prepare their data for the class in a way that either supports certain viewpoints towards race or describes a bias that they see in their results.
About my class
After teaching mathematics for several years now one thing has become immensely clear. Students require hands-on activities in order to apply their learning and display their full mathematical understanding. In a math classroom, this can be demonstrated in a variety of ways, such as creating art projects, building figures, or visually representing mathematical ideas with manipulatives such as Algebra Tiles. Unfortunately, I have also found that not every school comes equipped with the resources to supply and encourage more of these hands-on activities. It is also especially important to note that not all students should be expected to have the means to supply all of their own materials to be fully prepared for school. This project will not only help me support my students with those daily supplies that school has been designed to require but will also provide a strong base for supplies that will be used in a variety of projects and hands-on learning throughout the school year. Specific mathematical projects that these supplies will benefit include tessellation design and applying statistics to understand equity. Pencils, markers, rulers, scissors, glue sticks and protractors will allow students to apply their geometry skills by creating their own tessellating patterns. They will apply their understanding of angle measures (interior and exterior angles) as well as their understanding of basic geometric shapes and why not all regular polygons tessellate. Supplies such as the pencils, EXPO markers, and scissors and glue will aid algebra students in their work towards their Statistics Supporting Equity project. Students will be doing their own research and will need to visually prepare their data for the class in a way that either supports certain viewpoints towards race or describes a bias that they see in their results.