2nd July post. I ran into a bit of a hump a few days ago; I spent a couple hours making a lesson on math in music composition, only to realize that what I had at the end was a a lot of words and very little activities/interaction. I enjoy writing, and as a result I have a general tendency to write a lot (I don't frequently turn in essays significantly under the word limit). I guess that's one thing that I will have to check myself on as I keep working.
Some topics are more conducive to creating good activities than others, so I might also have to acknowledge that the topics I am interested in may not always be the best fit for the kinds of things I want to create. On a more positive note, I had an idea that I think will give my project a lot more structure. I was sort of worried that I might just end up with a big list of random worksheets without much of a narrative. To help organize things and give me ideas, I am going to try to stucture a good deal of my project around the Severn math curriculum. I asked Mrs. McMahon to send me a picture of the table of contents of an Algebra I book (just taking a quick look at it gave me some ideas), and I am collecting a few other old textbooks from some people. Here are some demo sketches from one activity that I made. The activity is to create a map of a room (I chose my living room here) with objects the proper size and in their proper place relative to one another. The idea is to gain a better understanding of ratios/proportions and their application to maps.
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Okay, I'm back. I had about a week where I wasn't working on this project, but so far I've made decent progress. At this point, I have done a good amount of research and "completed" 2 out of five lesson plans I intended to make this summer. Of course, they are not finished products and I will definitely be tweaking them (possibly reworking them entirely, who knows?) in the future. That being said, I feel pretty good about what I have as a starting point.
On another note, I think I have a much better idea of what I'm actually going for with these things now (and it's a little different than what I had in mind before). Rather than making complete lessons, I think my project is going to end up as more of a bunch of supplements. What I'm going for is to create mini packets/worksheets which consist of a short write up and activities. The idea is that a teacher could theoretically use them to "spice up" a typical math lesson by exploring a topic through a real world lens (which, of course, is my primary goal here). |
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