Adam Rodrigues - EDCP 342A Blog

For my unit plan, I chose to cover the Linear Relations unit of Math 9 that I will be teaching on the long  practicum. All files are linked below :) Unit Plan Lesson 1 Plan   Lesson 2 Plan Lesson 3 Plan Climate Data

What I have learned This course helped introduce me to the vast body of literature about mathematics education that exists. It has been motivating to see that there is a history of reform and continual research amongst academic institutions, and that often practicing teachers are involved in this research too. I hope to continue reading as part of my ongoing professional development. I also find some of the theory very interesting! I've also learned that it's important to stop and solve a fun problem every once in a while! Having the little problems interspersed with the readings was not only educational in how we think about problems from our "teacher bird" and "student bird" perspectives, but they were also just really fun and having fun is encouraging.  How my ideas have changed throughout the course I think that I have opened my mind a bit more throughout this course to the possible efficacy of less conventional methods of teaching mathematics. Although ...

For the end of term math party, I shared one of my favourite problems: the mutilated chess board problem. It goes like this ... Suppose that one domino covers exactly two adjacent squares on a chess board. If the 1x1 squares on one pair of opposite corners are removed from a standard 8x8 chess board, can the remaining squares be covered by 31 of these dominoes such that there are no gaps or overlaps (ie. tesselate the board)? Solution: The solution is remarkably simple, and I think that is what gives the problem its beauty. Notice that any two adjacent squares of opposite colour. Therefore, a domino that covers exactly two adjacent squares must cover one white square and one black square. When opposite corners are removed from the board, the removed squares are both of the same colour (either both black or both white). Thus, of the remaining 62 squares on the board, there will be 30 of one colour and 32 of the other colour. Since there are an unequal amount of squares of each colour, t...

I really enjoyed this article! I have always enjoyed working things out from a minimal set of given truths or conventions; perhaps this is one of the reasons that I fell in love with math, particularly in university. I just never had the eloquent words of Hewitt: "If I'm having to remember ..., then I'm not working on mathematics". In a sense, this article equipped me with some language and examples to better illustrate ideas that I have been thinking about as long as I've been a student of mathematics. Reflecting on Hewitt's article will help my teaching practice in a number of ways. Most importantly, the discussion has highlighted for me the domain that I need to focus on improving my abilities as a teacher the most: creating or finding activities/resources that will enable students to learn necessary concepts through awareness, and learning how to conduct better formative assessment to more accurately take stock of students' current awareness levels and...