The purpose of the Week of Inspirational Math was to get us into a certain mindset that would help us be successful in math and prepare us for the year ahead.
The first activity we did was the “Building Shapes” activity. In a group of four, we had to make the provided shapes by folding and measuring the rope provided. Each member had to be touching the rope and we had to convince a skeptic that the shape was actually the said shape without using a ruler and by using mathematical vocabulary. The second activity we did was called the “Number Visual Pennies” activity. In this activity we had to arrange 100 pennies in a certain way so that each of the 5 different patterns were covered in an equal amount of pennies and amounted up to the full 100 pennies. For the third activity we did, the “One Cut Geometry” activity, we had to draw and cut out a scalene triangle. The catch? We could only use one cut to cut out the entire triangle so we had to fold the paper until each side was lined up on one line. In our fourth and final activity, “Square Mania”, we had to look at a collection of squares and count all the squares and line segments we saw. During the Week of Inspirational Math we watched five videos provided by YouCubed. The first one called “Strategies for Learning Maths” was about the different ways you could go about learning math or improving your math skills. It shares five different tips, draw it out, teamwork, experiment, look for different resources, and start with smaller cases. Out of each tip shared I can say that I’ve used each one while doing math. It helps to draw things out and see the problem and math becomes a lot easier when you can talk it out and try things with your peers. The second video we watched titled, “Speed is not Important”, explained that people learn and do math at different paces. As someone who learns math at a fairly fast pace, it’s always been a race to me. As I get farther into high school and math is becomes more difficult, I’m starting to realize that it’s okay to slow down and learn at my own pace and that I don’t need to struggle to keep up with the top of the class. On the third day we watched a video called “Brains Grow and Change”. |
In this video it was said that nobody is born as a “math person”.There’s no such thing as someone automatically being good at math and others just not being good at math. The message they were trying to get across was that as long as you work towards and put the effort into something, you can accomplish it. If you’re not good at math, you’re just not good at it yet. I’ve always been told that I wasn’t good at math because it’s not my strongest subject but I do it all the time and because I’ve put in the extra effort I’ve improved dramatically since I was told I wasn’t a “math person”. The next video we watched was called “Believe in Yourself”. It showed two girls working on a math problem, one believed in herself completely and one kept saying she couldn’t do it. The purpose of this video was to remind us that if we could believe in ourselves then we could eventually solve whatever problem we were working on. Having that mindset would help our brains grow too. The final video we watched was called “Mistakes are Powerful”. This video talked about how making mistakes and working through them reinforces the ideals and learning. If you keep working on a problem that you’re struggling with you’ll
An activity we did during this week that really stood out to me was the “Number Visual Pennies” activity. In this activity we were supposed to find different patterns and ways to count out 100 pennies. Each pattern was supposed to equally distribute the 100 pennies onto the provided visuals. When we first started to solve this problem we decided to first place one penny on each visual because each visual needed at least one penny stacked on it to meet the requirements. Then we just continued adding pennies to the visuals until we used all 100. One challenge we faced while doing this activity was finding multiple, unique ways to use all 100 of the pennies. Eventually our patterns got repetitive and we couldn't find new patterns. To overcome this challenge we asked other groups what they had come up with and how they solved the problem originally. Our group used the habit, “Finding Patterns”.
Looking back I think I worked really hard on all of these activities. I put a lot of effort and thought into them so I could present my best work. I liked working with my group but I also liked the individual time we had to think about it before hand. The inspirational videos also made me think more deeply about certain things and I've already found myself referring and referencing back to them. Overall, I think this was a good activity to jump start the year and I feel it will have a positive impact on the rest of my sophomore year, not just in math, but in my other classes as well.
An activity we did during this week that really stood out to me was the “Number Visual Pennies” activity. In this activity we were supposed to find different patterns and ways to count out 100 pennies. Each pattern was supposed to equally distribute the 100 pennies onto the provided visuals. When we first started to solve this problem we decided to first place one penny on each visual because each visual needed at least one penny stacked on it to meet the requirements. Then we just continued adding pennies to the visuals until we used all 100. One challenge we faced while doing this activity was finding multiple, unique ways to use all 100 of the pennies. Eventually our patterns got repetitive and we couldn't find new patterns. To overcome this challenge we asked other groups what they had come up with and how they solved the problem originally. Our group used the habit, “Finding Patterns”.
Looking back I think I worked really hard on all of these activities. I put a lot of effort and thought into them so I could present my best work. I liked working with my group but I also liked the individual time we had to think about it before hand. The inspirational videos also made me think more deeply about certain things and I've already found myself referring and referencing back to them. Overall, I think this was a good activity to jump start the year and I feel it will have a positive impact on the rest of my sophomore year, not just in math, but in my other classes as well.