Comments on: Geometry – Day 57 – Tessellation Project Cont’d & Area I

By: #Made4Math: Student Art « Writing to Learn to Teach

#Made4Math: Student Art « Writing to Learn to Teach — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 06:01:32 +0000

[…] online. To save you 30 seconds, I’ll direct you to Dan Meyer’s explanation here andÂ here. (I didn’t use a hexagonal base, as you might note. I gave each kid half of a 3×5 note […]

By: dan

dan — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 01:23:08 +0000

Oh, no, we’ve got a unit on proofs. It’s a monster failing that I couldn’t make them enjoy proofs as much as I did when I was them.

But for me to be moving through area, building momentum there, only to break pace for a quick proof. Nah. There’s too much negative association there I don’t want to bleed all over this new topic. Maybe at the end of the area unit and, even then, only for a homework assignment.

By: e

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 15:51:44 +0000

So, are you saying that there are absolutely no proofs in your curriculum? Not even proofs with triangle congruence and such? What else do you do in the geometry class? Now I have to see the textbook :) As for “…would’ve been a showstopper”, my attitude is that students don’t necessarily know what’s good for them :)

By: dan

dan — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 02:32:29 +0000

Oh sure, yeah, okay. Y’know, the bulleted lists are not having fun inside some RSS readers. Firefox is fine, but, who knows.

Anyway, I took the opportunity to take them through an extremely informal proof of the conjecture, basically just a derivation of the formula. But I don’t think my easily-frustrated, fidgety, hedonistic high school students would’ve called an official foray back into proofs “nice.” Not by any definition of the word.

I hope that’s the difference between higher education and high school, but telling my kids, “Now let’s try a proof,” would’ve been a showstopper, I’m positive. Which is kind of a bummer.

By: e

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 02:25:31 +0000

Oops. There are 5 slides with number 6 on them. The one where you write the area of a triangle; 11. in the notes.

By: dan

dan — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 20:33:40 +0000

Slide 6? The one with all the angry wolves? Not sure I follow. Can you elaborate?

By: e

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 17:29:09 +0000

Do you do proofs in your geometry? In slide 6, for example, they could have proved that the area of any triangle is bh/2. The picture is there, they’d just need to put the words to it, use some triangle congruence and alternate interior angle thm. It would have been a nice exercise, I think.