CLG 1.1.1
Lee Holmes
Rita G. Foss
2003; Mathematics Teacher pg. (654-656)
“Sharing Teaching Ideas;
Linear Equations: High school Algebra 1”
The objective of this article is to give teachers some tools and ideas on how to interpret and enhance students’ understanding of linear equations. The author explains that students with and without special needs share the same needs when it comes to learning mathematics. Students may not have been that successful in earlier mathematics courses and do not know how to pick out important and meaningful concepts and relate them to other ideas. The teacher then came up with a way to help students remember facts about Linear Equations; she used a flip chart to help retain knowledge. Students wrote down key ideas from certain sections. A strong point of this article is that it creates a different learning tool that someone can use in their classroom. It seems to work for all students and gives them extra repetition to increase retaining ability. A weakness I saw in the article was that the math-phobic students put too much information on the index card. By putting too much information on one cardimportant facts do not stand out. The “this is too easy” student puts so little on the card that when it is quiz time they have forgotten all the key concepts.
This article was very helpful with trying to organize a way to have students interpret mathematics. It also teaches students how to pick out key concepts of mathematics; while also organizing it by sections. It is a neat tool that can be used in all subject areas.
Susan Gay, Charlotte J. Keith
November 2002; Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School (pg. 146-147)
“Reasoning about Linear Equations”
The objective of this article is to define a new way to approach learning linear equations. In math student’s reason, analyze, and compare as they study different topics, mostly through similarities and differences. In this article the author explains a lesson where the students made use of a semantic feature analysis grid. The grid was used twice in an eighth grade algebra course. The first time it followed a lesson on linear equations. Students needed some key terms defined to proceed. Some of these terms include non-zero, origin, and x-intercept. The first time using the grid the class became frustrated because they were used to determining the slope and y-intercept of that equation. It made them think at a higher level instead of giving isolated answers. They had to generalize across equations instead of examining one. Five weeks later the students could identify all the attributes of all equations and make generalizations about columns and rows of the grid. The strengths of this article are that it shows that higher level questions enhance students’ ability to learn new ideas and involves all students in decision making, and class participation. A weakness of this article is that there were still some students that had difficulty distinguishing between attributes and the best way to help these students hadn’t been determined.
This article was informative in that it creates a way to assess students understanding of “why things are” and “how they came to be”. This is an open ended problem that a teacher can use to determine where a student is in his phase of learning and build on it and assess again later. Implementing these tools into my teaching can help assess students’ ability andhelp them organize their ideas. It will also assist students to retain information and relate it to relevant issues.
Discussion Questions
1. In what ways do students use Linear Equations in every day life?
2.What other way could you come up with the answer to the clothing store question?
3.How can educators go about teaching Linear Equations more effectively?