Physically Teaching Math

This week in math, we did a number of things including a paper folding activity that had us looking at and talking about shapes and we also began developing our group, interdisciplinary lesson plan. Our instructor had us draw a line segment on a piece of paper and then asked us to make geometrical comparisons and shapes using the segment we drew. First we had to fold a line perpendicular to our segment and then one parallel. Then we had to make a square where our line segment was one of its sides. The second activity we did, involved simply folding and discussing the shapes we were making. The end product of the folding activity was a box. This week made me think about how important it is to physically display geometry. This is a subject that seems to be a challenge to most students. The activities we did this week proved that geometry can be easily simplified by having the students make physical displays of the information.

One question that came to mind this week was about interdisciplinary lessons and how math plays a role in this. My question is how much math needs to be present in a lesson for it to be considered a math lesson? While looking online for a lesson plan to use for our group interdisciplinary lesson, I found that many lessons that claim to have a math element simply have a number element. Some of the lessons I found look at numbers but do not actually have the students do any sort of mathematical computing with the numbers. Is this really considered an integrated math lesson? It seems to me that a lesson should have some sort of computing or analyzing element to be considered a math lesson.

Overall, this week taught me about the importance of physically teaching math (especially geometry) and made me think about how to incorporate math into other subjects and areas of interest to my students. The box activity was a great way to teach us about shapes while also getting us excited about creating an actual project. I could see this being a great activity in the classroom. Getting students excited about learning is an easy way to get them to buy into the task at hand and the learning that goes along with that.