In the classroom, Ed has a tape recorder to tape my lectures. This has
presented no real problems as the tape recorder does a great job of picking
up my voice even from the back of the classroom. I have had to modify the
way I present material to the class however. Before I had Ed in my class I
could point to things on the board and simply say something like "we add
these two terms together". Now I need to explicitly state which two terms
I'm talking about. e.g. I now say "we add the terms 3x and 7x together".
POINTING at a term doesn't record well ;)
Ed works with a tutor in our Learning Resource Center before or after
class. He completes his homework assignments and takes quizzes and tests
there as well. Early in the semester, we didn't have much problem. Most
of the material was a review for Ed. Once we started solving equations, Ed
started having some difficulty with the more lengthy and complex prblems.
Normally the tutor would read the equation to Ed and Ed would tell the
tutor what to write. The tutor would repeat the new equation to Ed and Ed
would indicate the next step he wanted to take to solve the problem.
As the equations got longer and more complex, Ed had trouble
remembering/visualizing them. We needed something else. At that point we
started using those plastic refridgerator magnets for little kids. We
could lay out the equation for Ed and he could feel the equation with his
hands instead of trying to remember the whole thing. This was an
improvment, but those little magnet numbers are only about an inch or so
high. While they are plenty large to see, they can be hard to feel. Ed
had trouble with 3's and 8's as well as 7's and 2's. I tried working out
some equations with my eyes closed and I have to say it was pretty hard to
tell the difference between some of the numbers.
My next solution was to buy 3 inch tall numbers from a local craft store.
I think the numbers were for putting on your mailbox or house to indicate
your address. Anyway, I bought a bunch of those and we tried again. The
large numbers worked out a lot better. Ed was able to identify the numbers
with no difficulty and we were back in business.
Once we included grouping symbols in our equations, we needed a way to
represent them for Ed. The tutor and I couldn't think of anything so I
wandered through the same craft store until I came across Sculpey. Its a
modeling clay that gets hard after you bake it in the oven. I rolled some
out and made a few sets of grouping symbols (), [], etc. Problem solved.
In a couple weeks we'll start working on factoring polynomials. I look
forward to it and hope we can supply Ed with the tools he needs to
understand the material. Near the end of the semester we'll look at
graphing linear equations. That's when I'll pull out the geoboard. I also
have some thoughts about making something out of peg board and using golf
tees to plot points. We'll see how the geoboard works before I head to
Lowe's to buy pegboard!
thanks
Brad
Bradley H. Thurmond
Program Chair, Mathematics, Life and Physical Science
Ivy Tech State College - Region 5
1815 E. Morgan St.
Kokomo, IN 46901
(765) 459-0561, Ext. 378
****************************************************************************
* To post to the list: email mathedcc@archives.math.utk.edu *
* To unsubscribe, send mail to: majordomo@archives.math.utk.edu *
* In the mail message, enter ONLY the words: unsubscribe mathedcc *
* Words in the Subject: line are NOT processed! *
* Archives at http://archives.math.utk.edu/hypermail/mathedcc/ *
****************************************************************************