Summer school begins this week. The first session of my class
The Teaching of Mathematics begins tomorrow. In addition to
reviewing the syllabus and work of the semester, we spend a
portion of our time thinking about math and why it is so
important in our daily lives. I begin by showing the animated
short of Sandburg's Arithmetic. I then ask students to take five
minutes to brainstorm and list all the ways they have used math
in the last 24 hours. We discuss their lists as they share and
then I read Math Curse by Jon Scieszka. It begins: On Monday in
math class, Mrs. Fibonacci says,Through the eyes of a child we
see that getting dressed, eating breakfast, catching the school
bus, eating in the cafeteria, English, P.E., geography and just
about everything else is related to math. How are these
"problems" solved? With math, of course! "You know, you can
think of almost everything as a math problem." On Tuesday I
start having problems. At this point the students are given a
math attitude and anxiety assessment.