Sample Mathographies Universal Mathematics Review
Handout 3.3
STUDENT A: Remembering math from the early grades is tough for me. I don’t remember learning math in the elementary grades, even though no doubt it was there. My first recollection of math was in the sixth grade. My teacher was very concept oriented in his teaching. I remember him writing constructive notes on the homework to help me through difficult problems. He took the time to do this every day. That made the class memorable to me. The thing that comes to mind is first learning the order of operations. I don’t know exactly when, but sometime in the middle school years. I can’t recall how I learned it other than I had the knowledge going into high school. Keep in mind that I grew up in an era where general math was the way to go leaving algebra for the more ambitious students. I can honestly say that my favorite math teacher was the geometry teacher. She was the first teacher that I had in high school that related what we were learning to practical applications, thus teaching meaning. It probably helped that she was also the home economics teacher, using her vocational background to teach meaning. That class was the turning point from hating math to liking math. From that class forward I was anxious to learn more about mathematics. If it weren’t for her, I probably wouldn’t have furthered my high school mathematics education. STUDENT B: I am a freshman at RHS. I play baseball, football, and I am in marching band. I love to go camping and skiing. I live with my parents at home and I have 1 brother. Someday I hope to go to a division 1 school on a dual scholarship for athletics and academics. I am a pretty good student and have been since I started school. My parents push me to get the best grades I can and won’t accept anything below a “B”. Usually I am very organized and turn in all of my assignments, but once in a blue moon I forget or just lose it. My favorite subject in school is history because I love to learn about the past. To be honest math has never really been my favorite subject and it definitely doesn’t come easy to me. I have to work hard in order to get the grade I want. As a kid I remember math being pretty easy until I got to middle school. And last year in algebra I definitely struggled. I am taking this class so that one day I can get into the college of my choice. I hope that this class is easier for me than algebra last year. I hope to get an “A” in this class and I know that if I work hard I can do it. STUDENT C: As a child, math was never one of my strong subjects. It was definitely not one of my favorite subjects either. I struggled to get an A in my math classes in elementary school and I almost failed one of my math TAKS test. It was during my 7th and 8th grade years when I started to challenge myself by getting into honors classes, thanks to my brother. He was the one who suggested I get into honors by telling me it will greatly help my in the future. If not for him I probably wouldn’t be writing this. During my 8th grade year was when math started becoming easy for me. I was able to average all 100 for the entire year in my Algebra I class. That’s when I fell in love with math. As time went on and I began high school, the difficulty level from middle school to high school definitely surprised me. I obviously didn’t average all 100 like I did in 8th grade, but I still maintained all A’s for the year in my geometry class. In my sophomore year, Algebra II was harder than I expected. I assumed it would be easy like middle school. But even so math was still my strongest subject during my sophomore year. Now that junior year has begun math has seemed much harder than before to me. My grades have not been up to par in my past years in math. Ever since I recently moved here I was always questioning if I was either slacking off or the school just teaches a higher curriculum here than my old school. I thought it was a mix of both since I somewhat slacked off at my old school but still maintained to get high grades. How might this information be useful to the teacher in planning instruction? In providing feedback to students? Source:http://www.imiddlemath.org/mathography