Dec 4, 2024 Exit Slip

(The blog post may be a bit fragmented; I was initially typing reminders to myself for later, but they seemed solid enough to be in the post as-is.)

(This blog post will only discuss the guest lecture today. Unfortunately, I will be omitting the Alice Major article.)

During Myron's lecture today, I asked a question about the transmission of mathematics and who is expected to know about the ideas presented in class because it was super complex and it made me wonder how they taught it to each other, and was explained that it was mainly astronomer priests who held the vast knowledge of how to process and write these numbers and do advanced calculations. This was particularly interesting to me because with how much numeracy skills have spread throughout our modern population; we take for granted how we all have a base line understanding of our number systems, notations and ways to reason. This offers a sense of empathy and perspective on the potential that my students have, but also opens up ideas of the logistics behind mathematics and raised questions on the history of mathematics education throughout time and space.

As for the activities that we covered today, the one that stood out the most to me was the second activity where we had our left arms going in a 1-2 rhythm while our left arms went in a 1-2-3 rhythm (which was very similar to a brain break that we did in EPSE 308, but the difference is that we were also attaching meaning to our rhythms and making combinations of things). It combines embodied learning with connection and reflection, which has been a part of the curricular competencies that had piqued my interest lately as I design the project for the unit plan as well as thinking about the plans; the design behind my project was based on connecting polynomials to student lives, and I decided to add retrieval practice to the project by having an extending question in a practice unit test (see Lesson #10 of my unit plan). Of course, what was presented today has provided ideas on how to connect and reflect in a more embodied, in-the-moment way that integrates history.

We also had an activity where we had to interpret dots and lines and then what a shell would've been. There are implications on patterns here -- when I wrote my lesson plan for a "math lab", I tried to play on drawing on student prior learning by getting them to play on patterns (distributive property and multiplying monomials and monomials --> multiplying monomials with polynomials), and my belief and confidence in using patterns to help students extend into new proficiencies has been increased. The exercise itself did leave a lot of room for guesswork that felt reminiscent of the emotions I felt during Malihe's lecture on how immigrant students may feel in a mathematics classroom -- we were trying to interpret number systems in a completely different language and base system and we were collectively stumbling to figure out what a shell represented. It was frustrating, but they were certainly good exercises to build teacher empathy especially as mathematics teachers who deal with a subject that varies so much between cultures and backgrounds.

In general, the lecture offered even more cultural perspective and admiration of mathematical beauty in applications (using mathematics on a 2D plane to intricately plan the movements of shadows on a 3D structure). As previously discussed, I defined beauty as going from the simple to the complex in an easy flowing and elegant manner, and this is yet another example that I could present to students to boost their appreciation of mathematics. Not only that but the elaborate representations of numbers being inscribed in various objects and art forms feel like a pursuit of the fusion of art and mathematics considering how downright long it could take to inscribe. Pursuit of beauty is pursuit of mathematics.

A lot of the lesson also ties into Jacob's question earlier this term about how we visualize time. This was a running thought in my mind throughout the calendar portion of the class, and the question that Jacob asked now has an additional historical tie-in. Look at the cool way that the Mayans imagined and represented their time! 13 months, multiple cycles, and less days than us. There is a comment to make on the prominence of their representations of time considering that it made me think the world was going to end when I was at the ripe age of 12... though it's nice to know that it really just means the end of a cycle of the world. There's some cool mysticism aspects to the mathematics of the Mayans.