Reflection Logs


Your reflection log questions will be posted here as they are presented in class.

January 19:  Describe your experience in 140. 

January 21:  After two classes, reading the course information and rereading the preface to the explorations manual, how do you believe our 141 class will compare to your 140 experience? 

January 24:  In today's society we are continually bombarded with survey results.  What challenges did you discover today that face survey writers?  Have you written a survey for some purpose and gotten surprising results due to the way the questions were phrased?  Discuss.

January 26:  Complete "Looking Back" question 1 for activity 7.4.

January 28:  How are you feeling about working in groups?  Discuss your thoughts on the experience.  What can you do to make the experience more productive?  

January 31:  Generalise today's experience.  What difficulties do you see in using the experimental method to answer any question. 

February 2:  We see statistics all around us.  Find an example of a statistic in the media (any form) that you consider reliable and one that you question.  Discuss why you trust one and not the other. 

February 4:  Already in this class we have engaged in several diverse activities, and we have had almost no lecture time.  Why is this appropriate for our course?  How will this compare with your future experiences teaching elementary school?

February 7:  What are your personal goals for this course?  What do you hope to get out of this course?  Are your personal goals in-line with the course goals as described?  What will you put into the course in order to acheive your personal goals?

February 9:  Consider the following situation:  I play a simple game with you and your friend.  I flip a coin and will pay $2 to you if it is heads and $2 to your friend if it is tails.  The coin turns up heads and I pay you  $2.  Your friend says "That's not fair."  What does this mean?  How does it relate to when students say the same thing after not being given credit for late assignments?  Discuss. 

February 11:  Today we begin geometry.  Discuss your prior experiences and feelings with geometry. 

February 14:  It seemed to me that many of you followed a sequence of steps today like the following:
1.  Huh?
2.  Oh, now I understand what they want.
3   How do I do it?
4.  I have an idea.
5.  I try my idea (does it work?  if no, go to 3, if yes, go to 6)
6.  I got it!
Discuss how this felt.  Were you frustrated along the way?  Did your frustration pay off in steps 2 and 6 with personal insight?  Is enduring the challenges worth the rewards at the end? 

February 16:  Today we worked with geometric proof.  What is your experience with geometric proof before this course?  What were your feelings during the process today?  How did you feel about it at the end?

February 18:  How did you feel about discussing your thoughts about images?  How did you feel about others' responses?  How did you feel about reproducing images from memory?  What did you learn from today's activities and how do they apply to your future career?

February 21:  How did watching actual children in an actual classroom fit with your prior expectations about teaching?  Describe the experience both socially and mathematically - that is, be sure to comment on the mathematics of the teacher and the students. 

February 23:  How did you feel about doing an extension of the activity we saw the children do on video?  Now that you have done the activitiy yourself, what do skills and concepts does this activity develop (for you and the children)?
 
February 25:  Did you find "the right" definition today?  Why not?  Discuss.

February 28:  Today we discussed a kinematic approach to the sum of the angles of a triangle (using a high-level idea of holonomy).  Some students' learning styles are disposed to kinematic learning.  Discuss your reactions to this example and suggest other ways you could incorporate kinematic learning of mathematics in your classroom.

March 2:  Today, in order to make up a bit of time, we talked through things as a whole class, thus requiring less individual accountability.  How did you feel about this?  Did you feel it was as good for your personal understanding as working to develop your own understanding?  (Be careful to distinguish "easier" and "more comfortable" from "good for you".)

March 4:  It is my impression that today combined review of tests for congruence of triangles and an extension to tests for congruence of quadrilaterals.  Was some of the material review and some surprising?  Discuss.

March 7:  What did you think of having a theme story in class today (the museum)?  Would you like if we did more often?  Would you like to try such a thing in your classes?

March 9:  How do you feel entering the exam?  What aspects are you confident about?  What aspects are concerning you?

March 11:  How did you feel about the exam after having taken it?  Was it what you expected?

March 21:  Now that you have had your exam returned, what have you learned from the experience?  Were there any surprises in evaluation?

March 23:  We're at a midterm reflection point.  How do you feel about how things have gone so far?  What would you like done differently for the second half?  What will you do differently for the second half? 

March 25:  How do you feel about the new (assigned) groups?

March 28:  What are your thoughts and feelings about the geoboard and mira activities that we have been doing recently?  Have you used these tools before?  Do you find them useful?

March 30:  Can you think of any tools for rotation that may be more useful than tracing?  Discuss.

April 1:  What was different about today's class with Professor Wallace?

April 4:  missed a day.  no question here.

April 6:  How do you feel about this larger project that we are now pursuing with tesselations?

April 8:  No question today.  Two on April 11.

April 11 (replacement for April 8):  Assess your presentation today.  What were its strengths and weaknesses?  What did you learn from the extended experience? 

April 11:  How do you feel entering the exam?  What aspects are you confident about?  What aspects are concerning you?

April 13:  How did you feel about the exam after having taken it?  Was it what you expected?
 
April 15:  Now that you have had your exam returned, what have you learned from the experience?  Were there any surprises in evaluation?

April 18:  Were there any surprises for you on Friday when we discussed the definition and meaning of pi?  Anything particularly interesting?

April 20:  On Monday we had two parts of our exploration -- one was open-ended exploration of possible areas of squares and rectangles on geoboards, the other was the goal-driven development of area formulas for triangles, parallelograms and trapezoids.  Which one did you prefer?  Why?

April 22:  Today we looked at possible table arrangements from a mathematical point of view.  Discuss some of the social consequences of some of the different table arrangements that you considered.

April 25:  Due to the extended nature of the next question, I will count that as two questions and we will have no question for 11/29.

April 27:  Please reflect on the course as a whole.  Good questions to address:  What was most surprising?  What are you most pleased to have learned?  Is there anything you wish you had learned (please remember teaching children mathematics is the subject of CURR 316)?  Please include any other summarial thoughts.