Article

One:

The topic on which I am centering my unit plan is transformations. The first
lesson that I plan on teaching deals with mapping, or the correspondence between a
set of points. One example of mapping is when maps of the round earth are made
flat onto paper. This is an example of a mapping because every point of the globe is
projected straight down to exactly one point on the plane on the flat piece of paper.
Many other examples of mapping, similar to this one, exist.

The article that I read in The Mathematics Teacher Journal was titled

Exploring Function Transformations Using the Common Core. This article related to
this lesson because it too dealt with the functions that cause points to correspond to
each other. In general, this article discussed how often times students simply
memorize the rules that cause points from a function to move to a certain place. For
example, when I was in middle school, I memorized the rule that when I am given an
equation such as y=f(x-3), I need to move all the points of the function 3 units to the
right. I never knew why I had to do this, but I knew that this was the rule so I always
followed it. The authors of this article, Becky Hall and Rich Giacin, claim that if
teachers were to follow the common core standards for transformations, then
students would understand the rules of why functions act the way that they do. The
common core standards state that students should be able to describe
transformations as functions that take points in the plane as inputs and give other
points as outputs. More simply put, this requirement states that students should
know that a function must be written as a single variable. Thus when students are
given the function T(x, f(x)) = (x + 3, f(x), they must perform a substitution so that

the x value is written as a single value. Thus the students would make the
substitution and get x = x + 3 with x= x-3. Then the function can be rewritten as
T(x, f(x)) = (x, f(x 3)), and thus the transformation T takes the function y = f(x)
and maps it to y = f(x 3). This example illustrates why the rules of functions
work as they do.

Until I read this article, I had no idea as to why the rules of mapping functions

worked the way that it did. I believe that Hall and Giacin wrote this article with the
intent of further educating teachers on how best to teach the concept of mapping to
their students. I think that Hall and Giacin want students to understand the
reasoning behind why mapping works instead of following the traditional methods
of learning by memorizing rules as to how points are mapped. For this reason, I
believe that Hall and Giacin wrote this article, with the audience of teachers in mind,
to convince teachers to describe the reasoning behind transformations and why
they work, rather than just having students memorize rules.

This article will greatly change how I structure my lesson plan and how I

teach my first lesson on transformations. When I give this lesson to my students, I

will make sure that I explain to them why transformations work the way that they
do instead of requiring them to memorize a set of rules.

Article Two:

The second article that I read came from Education World and was titled

Teens Seek Older Peers for Advice Over Adults. The article started by stating that
most juniors and seniors look to their parents or other adult figures for advice,
freshmen and sophomores often look to their older peers (i.e. the juniors and
seniors) for guidance. I believe that sometimes this could be beneficial for the
younger students if the upperclassmen were to offer guidance that is beneficial for
ones mind, body, and spirit; however, I believe that this could also be detrimental
for the younger students if the upperclassmen promote inappropriate behavior that
is harmful for ones mind, body, or spirit. Author Jason Papallo gave an example in
his article of how looking to older peers for guidance could be detrimental. His
example is that when a sampling of adolescents were participating in a driving
simulation by themselves, they drove as safe adults. However, when the
adolescents were surrounded by their peers during the driving simulation, they
took many more risks than they did when they were driving alone. This example
goes to show that when adolescents look to their peers for guidance, it can
sometimes be detrimental to their well-being.

I believe that this article was directed at parents and teachers with the

intention of informing them about why adolescents might be making the decisions
that they are making and what aspects (i.e. the guidance from an older peer) factor
into the decisions that they make. Perhaps the author believes that if he informs
parents and teachers about whom students look to for guidance, then parents and
teachers would better be able to understand and serve these students.

I think that the information from this article will be beneficial because it will

affect the strategy that I use to best connect with my students. For example, since
my younger students most likely will be looking to my older students for guidance, I
will try to instill rich virtues in my older students so that the younger students will
possibly pick up some of these virtues from the older students. Another example of
this is that I will strategize on how best to get my older students engaged in learning
so that the younger students will follow their example and be engaged in the lesson
as well.

Article Three:
The last article that I read also came from the Mathematics Teacher Journal
and was titled Algebraic Activities Aid Discovery Lessons. Although this article was
not strictly related to my unit on Transformations, it did have some points that I
thought would be useful for my unit. This article discussed that students often forget
how to graph more complicated functions. For example, students usually have
memorized the graph of y=x^2, but when students are asked to graph y= -x^2, they
are often confused on how to do so. Since students often forget the rules of how to
graph more complicated functions, Patricia Wallace-Gomez, the author of this article
recommends to teachers that each day they give their students increasingly difficult
review activities on how to graph functions. Wallace-Gomez believes that as the
students master the easier graphs of functions from the first days, they will be able
to complete more complicated graphs of functions as the days progress.
I think that Wallace-Gomez wrote this article with the intention of giving
teachers ideas of how to provide examples of engaging practice activities for
students to do with regards to graphing equations. I think the Wallace-Gomezs
overall goal might be to encourage teachers to use authentic forms of learning, such
as the ones described in this article.
This article will affect my unit plan because I will understand that my
students might not be able to immediately remember and understand how to graph
all of the transformations required of them. For this reason, I will be sure to
encourage the students to practice graphing transformations regularly by giving
them time to work together in groups at the beginning of each class. I will strive to

engage them by allowing them to work together in groups, allowing them to create
presentations of their graphs for the class, and possibly even by attempting a
human-graphing method that Wallace-Gomez recommends in her article.