Skip to main content

Encouraged

Calc class today:

Limits review...he was actually on it! Material that I thought was going way over his head last week was processed and we had some really good conversations about different types of problems. Great questions were asked, showing that he's actually thinking about what he's doing and why, too. (There are, of course, still some trouble areas like knowing when to factor/rationalize and what numbers will "help" in the simplification process, but it's a process, right?).

Then, we did some free fall problems, applying limits and previewing derivatives. It was so great to actually apply what we've been talking about to a real situation and make it mean something. Here's the problem we spent time looking at, and some of the humor that came out of it...

A construction worker is working on a building that is 1000 feet tall. (side note, we took a tangent to see how many stories that would be, because 1000 ft is just an strange number to envision). Suppose the construction worker accidentally drops his wrench. If he immediately yells "Look out below!" (or something similar), how long will the person standing on the ground below him have to get out of the way before the wrench hits the ground?  What will the speed of the wrench be at that time?

We took a tangent to talk about finding speed (using the limit definition of derivative, but he doesn't know that yet) at 5 seconds, and then at the time the wrench would hit the ground. We also had a good conversation about why the velocity is negative. When we found the velocity (-160ish ft/sec at 5 seconds, -252ish ft/sec at impact), we talked about how fast that really is, relating it to a football field. He couldn't believe the wrench could fall that fast.

When we had spent a lot of time talking about speed. He asked, "Wait, we didn't answer our question yet, can the person get out of the way in time?" *GRIN*

ASL is so visual with these kinds of problems...I love it.
Labels:

Comments

  1. SameerSeptember 28, 2009 at 9:37 PM

    Quick question: is your calc class only one person?

    ReplyDelete
  2. JessicaSeptember 29, 2009 at 5:32 AM

    Sam:

    Quick answer: Yes. That's the class where I'm teaching Math Remediation (one student) at the same time.

    ReplyDelete
  3. HwangOctober 9, 2009 at 11:37 AM

    Just outta curiosity, what makes ASL so visual w/ those problems?

    ReplyDelete
  4. JessicaOctober 10, 2009 at 12:46 AM

    @ninJa

    ASL is visual, period, but with these problems when you're talking about an object falling, it's explained visually the same as negative values on the y-axis. It's easy for students to see that the slope is negative before tangent lines are even talked about.

    Your thoughts?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ASL/English Vocabulary in the Math Classroom

My last semester in college, while I was student teaching, I had a class that emphasized different key topics in the field of Deaf Education.  One such topic was vocabulary development.  We all already knew that students who are deaf/hard of hearing have a lower vocabulary than their same-age hearing peers for a variety of reasons not least of which being their limited access to "incidental learning" that comes from listening to other people's conversations/tv/radio, etc.  In our class, we talked about ways to introduce new vocabulary in order to give students a more connected understanding of the new word in its five distinct forms. Picture Description/definition ASL sign (if applicable) English word (in print) Fingerspelling of English word I try to be conscious of this as I teach.  It's very difficult sometimes, and many of the math terms to not have standard ASL signs, so it is more difficult for the students to attach meaning and use the new term through f...
4 comments
Read more

Confession...I'm planning to use Khan Academy this year

It seems Khan Academy (henceforth referenced as KA) has a pretty bad rap in some math teacher circles.  I understand that the videos are somewhat lacking in the engagement factor, and motivating students with points and badges can seem somewhat elementary.  I also see that KA tends to focus more on a procedure/pattern than actual problem solving.  All that said, I will be using KA this year in my resource classroom.  I have a group of students that are in my class for numeracy skill building/strategies instruction.  I'm supposed to be teaching them 25 mins/day and allowing them 25 mins/day to work on their homework or classwork.  I have students of all grade and ability levels in one resource class, so lesson planning becomes difficult.  Twenty-five minutes is not a long time when you think about it, seemingly less when you think about real problem solving tasks. Enter KA.  Each student can be working on exercises related to what their indivi...
5 comments
Read more

Professional Goals

On my way to an evaluation team meeting today (I want to write more about that...but don't feel I can confidentially...one bad thing about being myself online and not having a blog pseudonym), I had a bit of a heart to heart with my boss (principal). You might think, "on the way" isn't very long...but picture 100+ outdoor stairs from the school building to the admin building where the meeting was being held...lol. Anyway, he was asking me how things were going, if I could believe that the year is already almost halfway over, and how time has flown in the 1.5ish years I've been in VA. He also mentioned that I have 30 more years to go before retiring. After that comment, he asked about my professional goals: When you're getting ready to retire, what do you hope to have accomplished/done? At first, I didn't know how to respond. I'm not much for long-term planning. I'm lucky to know and have decided that I indeed will be staying in VA for at leas...
7 comments
Read more