Gizmo: Introduction to Funtions

Could not do service learning this semester due to work conflicts, so gizmos it is! I chose this gizmo because it was relevant in unit one. I really liked this simple functions gizmo. It's a great tool for an introductory lesson. Also, I thought it was very cool how you could point arrows for the inputs to the outputs and then show you the ordered pairs and the graph along with it. It was good that the bottom of the gizmo showed what made them a function as well.

Something I would modify with this gizmo is to be able to point arrows and make ordered pairs that do not make a function, then have it explain why. If it did have this capability I might have missed it. However, I do think that I would use this in my classroom as an introductory lesson supplement, but with any lessons more complicated, probably not.

Service Learning Summary

This semester I was unable to do service learning do to work and other conflicts. However, I have learned a lot in this class this semester that I will share with you instead. At first when I took this class I thought it would be easy because I expected it to be re-learning math that I had already learned when I was in elementary school. It was the first day of class that I learned it would be more than simple elementary school math I would be learning. As a student who is not very good, nor has ever been very good at math I found this class to be very  challenging.

I feel that I have mastered many of the topics I have learned, but some, I still need to work on. Unit one and two were not very difficult for me because I was already confident in those areas. Base 10, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division were the main topics I knew I could do well in. In contrast, when we hit unit three's section on fractions, I found myself completely incompetent and felt lost through almost that whole section. It probably didn't help that my study buddy, Sheena, felt the same way. Fractions have always been very troubling for me, and even though it was a very visual and hands on section, I still feel horribly incompetent on the subject.

However, I did do pretty well in the beginning of unit three. GCF and LCM were very simple for me to grasp understanding of. Again, I should attribute this to my previous success in those areas. In this last section, unit four, I find it much easier to deal with. Converting between fractions, decimals, and percents is so much clearer to me. I really like the way we learned how to do this because the steps were very specific and not too lengthy for me to get confused.

The information I have learned in this class is very valuable to my path to becoming an elementary teacher. I still have a very long way to go on my understanding of some topics, but I believe that if I try harder, I will succeed. This semester has probably been my worst in college, but even if I have to retake this class and get a better grade, I will, because I know that when times got rough this semester in this class, I tended to get frustrated and give up. This class has been a learning experience outside of the knowledge I am expected to know by you, and I can just hope that if I apply myself for the rest of this semester, I can get through.
 

Unit One Gizmo: Finding Patterns

For this entry I did another gizmo because I'm waiting to be placed with a teacher in Chandler's district. I chose this gizmo because we had been working on patterns at the end of last week and I thought it looked interesting. This gizmo, I thought, was a bit boring because after a while the patterns become predictable. I thought that the show relationship button would be helpful for children who don't understand how to do the pattern just by doing it. It shows how many you need to add by showing the multiplication and a number line which lays out how many numbers you jump on the line to get to the next number in the pattern.

If I could change anything about this gizmo, I would make it use a variation of patterns ranging from basic to difficult. Also, I think it would make this less monotonous by making it into a game by timing how long it takes for a student to solve the pattern. I would probably only use this gizmo in the very beginning of a patterns unit because I feel like this shows very basic and easy patterns but does not challenge students as I would want to later in a patterns unit. 

Unit One Gizmo: Number Line Frog Hop

The gizmo I chose for this assignment was the "Number Line Frog Hop". I picked this particular gizmo because it looked like a very fun visual learning tool to help with addition and subtraction. The goal of the gizmo is for you to start from one point and then figure out how much you need to add or subtract so the frog can get from its original place to a fly's place so the frog can eat it. I really loved this tool because I think it could be very useful to children that need to visualize how to add and subtract in general or just how to use a number line. I like that you can add more flies to the line and that it can leap using how many ones and tens combined it takes to get to a fly. Also, I like how the gizmo shows the equation it used to jump places. However, I wish it would show the frog jumping using only increments of one.