FLEXAHEXAGONS!!
While watching Vi Hart's videos on flexahexagons, I decided that I had to make one. I attempted this before even making it to the "how to" video and was actually quite successful... I could have had sharper edges and perhaps my triangles were not perfect equilateral triangles, but my flexahexagon did the job. While going through the series I was starting to add shapes of different colors, and added the arrows of direction. I was surprised to notice that when you flip it and starting turning it from the opposite side, you end up with the shapes in different orientation. Although I didn't (and still don't) fully understand what I was playing with or the full mechanics on how it worked, I was having fun. While watching Vi Hart, I noted down a few quotes that stuck with me: “Mathematics is about making things up and seeing what happens.”
“Sometimes its more fun to let my hands solve the problem”
“You can think about it first or you can just try it.” “Sciencing your math is a good way to check your thought process and inspire your thinking”
Check our my flexahexagon here!: Taylor's Flexahexagon
BAGEL MATH ART!!
Bagel art was really fun. It took 2 bagels to get it right. The first I biffed but it allowed me to understand the cuts and why those cuts led to this result: 
Watching the video was kind of boring, but working with my hands alongside the video was satisfying. I was creating something while learning, and when I finally got it on the second bagel, I was very proud! After this activity I believe that creating and learning with my hands (and food) allowed for a greater level of satisfaction to the end result and the learning. Although the flexahexagon was fun, and felt like the creation of a fidget, I didn't get the same level of pride because I didn't fully understand it as quickly or as well as I did the chain-linked-bagel.
Sometimes just watching the video does not allow us to fully understand the created piece. We cant move it to look at it from different angles/ perspectives. We can feel where the twists are or how the texture or thickness may be different, and we definitely cannot learn from trial and error like I did with bagel #1. Hand on allows for more play, more mistakes, more learning... although this would have been much easier if my bagel wasn't already pre sliced, I factor I did not consider when doing my groceries.
I think that this type of learning explores and enhances students senses, but not only working on cognition skills but by pushing all students to use diverse senses to work towards a common goal. I think that this aligns well with Stylianidou and Nardi's concept of working towards universal design rather than adapting to certain "disabilities" (2019).
QUESTION: How do the quotes mentioned above by Vi Hart resonate with you? Will this affect your way of thinking about math? How does the idea of playing with your food to learn math make you feel (my mom would not have been impressed!)?
Stylianidou, A., & Nardi, E. (2019). Tactile construction of mathematical meaning: Benefits for visually impaired and sighted pupils. In M. Graven, H. Venkat, A. Essien, & P. Vale (Eds.), Proceedings of the 43rd Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (Vol. 3, pp. 343–350
"I think that this type of learning explores and enhances students senses, but not only working on cognition skills but by pushing all students to use diverse senses to work towards a common goal."
ReplyDeleteThis quote helped me understand how active learning can enhance students' success and interest for STEM (Vale & Barbosa, 2023). Active learning is the interaction between intellectual, social, and physical engagement. By 'cutting' the bagel or 'playing' with the flexahexagon, one have to think about what they are doing, how they are doing it, and how does it feel like. So much more information are registered consciously or unconsciously in this way. Thus, by engaging in the act, students are necessarily thinking about their task, which makes them active learners.
Reference:Vale, I., & Barbosa, A. (2023). Active learning strategies for an effective mathematics teaching and learning.
European Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 11(3), 573-588. https://doi.org/10.30935/scimath/13135
I was showing the bagel video to some of my students and they LOVED IT and (of course) asked if we could do it in class. I did not commit, but my inner voice said "ABSOLUTELY!" I think I can find a local business to donate a bunch of stale bagels to such a worthy cause and then we go to town. Now the teacher in me just needs to figure out some way to help my students make some math connections. :)
ReplyDelete