Blog 2

Blog #2! Conversion System Fun!                                    

Observation:  Today, I ran my first 10k marathon! After having completed it I began to reflect on the day and started to think back to the math lesson from the first day of class. The class discussion we had about how things became symbols, which became ideas started to resonate with me.

I thought about how I could incorporate things, like running marathons, into a math lesson. This would be something realistic which would involve the conversion system. There were a couple ways I discovered I might be able to do this. Lessons that included conversions could easily be explained with real life events, such as marathons. The students would be able to visualize how long each distance was.

Reflection:  I started thinking about lessons that I could potentially create and realized that I could explain to students how conversions could be used in real life in relation to distance through the use of marathons. The concept of kilometers or miles would be the “thingness”. The symbol would be the signs “10K” or “21K” and the idea would be being able to visualize how far these “things” are in reality. This way the students would easily be able to visualize how far a kilometer or meter when they are travelling in their own lives.

Reflection on a Reflection: In creating a lesson involving an idea like this, I thought it might also be a fun way to get students excited about running and physical fitness! It could be a challenge that would allow them to walk, or run or bike for "homework" and calculate how far they went in different units of measurement. This is just another way that students can take what they learned in the classroom and apply it to things they do in daily life. This is also a way of taking something students normally find boring or irrelevant and create a fun and educating learning experience!