Skip to main content

Math (Un)Fair

It was a great experience going to the Math (Un)Fair for our last class! I was sad that my doctor's appointment ran long and I had to miss the beginning of it, but I felt I got to see the majority of the student's projects in the time that I had. It was interesting to see the differences in the students' levels of understanding of the topic. While many of the projects were quite similar, once you went up to talk to the kids it became clear that some had a firm grasp on the concept of theoretical and experimental probability, whereas some students were still developing their understanding. I think the fair could have been improved by loosening the requirements to allow for a wider variety of projects - this would allow the students to learn from each other, as many of them would have done projects on different topics.

I think that math fairs like this are a great idea, and I would love to do something similar with my students. It's interesting to imagine what a math fair might look like with older mathematics students - maybe Grade 11 or Grade 12. Probability lends itself well to this sort of thing, as there can be an "experiment" or "game" for people to take part in as the walk through the fair. So I could see this working well with grade 10-12 Probability, Statistics or Combinatorics. But I could also imagine a several different topics that would work well for math fairs. It could fit in very well on a unit on deductive logic, with students creating their own logic puzzles or games for participants to take part in. I could also imagine a fair where each student presents on a topic of their own interest - maybe explaining a theorem in depth, or a mathematical artifact they'd researched, or some application of mathematics.

Math Fairs seem like a great way to get out of the classroom and engage with mathematics, and I would love to do something similar with my students if I have the chance.

Comments

  1. Susan Gerofsky18 December 2017 at 14:36

    Thanks for your thoughtful comments and extensions, Erika!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mirco Teaching Lesson Plan

Here is the lesson plan for my micro-teaching on making an origami tulip! Subject: Origami Tulip Class: EDCP 342A Date: October 18, 2017 Duration: 10 min Class Profile Table of 6 students Objectives The objective of this lesson is to teach students how to create their own origami tulip from a square piece of paper. If there is extra time, students will also have the opportunity to make a stem for their tulip. Materials & Equipment Needed Origami paper - 2 pieces for every student (one for the tulip, and one for either a stem or an extra piece if they want to start again. Lesson Stages Learning Activities Time 1 Hook & Introduction The teacher will present show the students an example of the flower the students will be folding, and go over a bit of information about the history of origami: Origami is the Japanese art of paper folding, coming from the Japanese word “Ori” (folding) and “Kami” (paper). There are lots of differ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Micro Teaching Feedback

 Thanks to Peter, Jing, Niloo and Brianna for their feedback on my microteaching! If I were to do this activity again either I would need more time, or I would need to make adjustments. To make it shorter to fit in the 10 minutes I could take out the background information on origami, or start with paper that already had the first four basic folds done. I think people really enjoyed the origami though, and it is a fun skill to learn, so overall I was quite happy with my microteaching. I just need to work on being better at estimating how long things take!
Post a Comment
Read more

My Mathematical Past

1. Something That Reached Me As A Math Learner My two strongest memories of being really excited about math come from very different ages. The first comes from pre-school, when I was about 3 or 4 years old. I went to a montessori preschool, and numbers and math were my favourite things to explore. There was an exercise called the thousand chain that involved laying a thousand beads in the hallway a (grouped into ones, tens, hundreds), and I remember being so excited when I completed it. The second memory comes from high school, when I discovered the youtube videos of ViHart. She used math to make beautiful art and music, and explain mind-bending concepts along the way, and I found it utterly fascinating. 2. Frustrations With Math Learning My biggest frustration with math learning came in University when I took a group theory course. The subject didn't come easily to me, and my professor didn't teach in a way that reached me, and it was the first time I felt lost and stresse...
1 comment
Read more