Final Project
Throughout the semester you will complete parts of a portfolio. Pieces
of this project will be collected and counted as your weekly
questions. A
complete, organised, well-presented compilation of all materials is due on
the last day of class. When this becomes a project instead of just
weekly questions, please remove questions, dates, and the "assignment" look
of the weekly questions. Put it together to make a coherent
whole. Feel free to change the sequence if you think it makes more
sense that way.
Your project will be checked for inclusion of all assigned topics and will
be evaluated based on the clarity and accuracy of the explanations given as
well as the overall presentation (neat, easy to find sections and entries,
easy to read, well-written, & c).
It is possible that portions of this project can be adapted to be included
in a portfolio for use when interviewing for teaching jobs to demonstrate
your deep understanding of the content of the elementary mathematics
curriculum.
Somewhere in this portfolio you must demonstrate at least one (several would
be better) appropriate use of each of the following manipulatives
pattern blocks
color tiles
dice
geoboard
"Mira" geometry reflector
compass
protractor
I encourage you to organise your project in a sequence that makes sense to
you, as many of these topics will be connected.
Please include in your project a "story" for 141. As a demonstration
for what this means, here is a story of 140:
"In Math 140 we learned about numbers. After a tiny bit in the
beginning about problem solving, we began by considering how to represent
numbers, and different number systems used around the world throughout
history. After that we settled in to using the Hindu-Arabic numerals
used around the world today. We learned about place value, and then
applied our newfound system to working with operations on numbers. We
learned about addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division for
natural numbers, and how to work with them for any size natural
numbers. We took a brief break from operations and number systems to
learn about some properties of numbers. We talked about the importance
of prime numbers and how they were useful for finding greatest common
divisor and least common multiple. We then thought about more than
just natural numbers. We extended to integers and checked that we
could continue to use all of our operations for them. We then took a
big jump to rational numbers - which were tricky because there are so many
different ways to represent rational numbers - fractions, decimals, and
percents, and even different ways to represent one number as different
fractions. We again discussed each of our operations with fractions
and decimals, and then talked about how to convert between fractions and
decimals. When doing this, we discovered there are some numbers that
can be written as decimals but not as fractions. They are the
irrational numbers. Finally, we ended with a little discussion about
percents, ratios, and proportions."
Somewhere in your final project, please tell me a story of 141.