I fully agree with the article on finding triangle centers. I believe that students often need to have a real world situation in order to understand geometry, as well as most other mathematical skills and concepts. Upper level geometry, in particular, can often lead to the the famous "When I am ever going to use this stuff?" question. By engaging students in problems like the sprinkler and amusement parks question, they can see a real world use of angle and perpendicular bisectors. This motivates students and encourages them to explore the concepts much more than a textbook lesson and worksheet on a skill that seems unnecessary.
I am always trying to think of real world examples to use in my math lessons for elementary students. Some things are obviously easy like addition, subtraction, rounding, and area but other things are more difficult. How do I convince 4th graders that they need to know prime numbers? Other than, "Because you will need that information in middle school!" I think that finding these investigative type of problems is difficult, especially for the elementary level. If anyone knows of a good resource with LOTS of investigative problems for K-5, please let me know.
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The NCTM Navigation books seem to have a lot of real world problems.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good question to pose to our class. I like the stuff that came out of Equals and Dayle Seymour many years ago.
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