Susan Ciano

E-Portfolio: Adolescent Mathematics

Knowledge of Learners:

How do I start a lesson without speaking mathematics so that by the 2nd or 3rd lesson the

students are speaking mathematics? That has been the focus of my learning and teaching for the

past year. In my student teaching this semester I began day 1 of an introduction to systems of

inequalities by using the activity "Polygraph" (https://teacher.desmos.com/polygraph/

custom/56251ff3a9530da11059e971). The students are tasked with posing yes or no questions to

a partner in order to efficiently eliminate 15 of the 16 graphs of systems on their computer screen

and zero in on the one their partner has chosen. The activity begins with any social and

mathematical language the students bring to the classroom, and ends with students using

mathematical vocabulary they have picked up from their peers.

In SEDC 710, Building Foundations of Literacy, I taught a 45 minute math lesson to a

class of my peers which consisted of at least 20 people who loathe and/or fear math. The lesson

needed to focus on literacy so my partner and I chose to teach limits from a conceptual

standpoint, focusing on the way that a word used in math can differ greatly from the word as it is

used in English. We chose to begin the lesson at a place where the students would feel

comfortable-- the English language. We knew that the students would bring their own personal

math baggage with them so we wanted to begin with what they already knew. The intention

was to connect what they already knew to the math that they might not know.

We created a lesson which focused more on discussion and exploration and less on actual

calculations. It was a success in my eyes because it sparked an interest in math in people who

likely have a lot of math baggage. One student even said he was looking forward to what we
would learn tomorrow. Another mentioned that they understood more from our lesson than they

ever had in their past academic experiences. While another, upon hearing an official definition of

limits, said that she had come up with that very definition on her own by working through the

lesson.

Knowledge of Subject Matter:

When I began taking the required math sequence at Hunter, at first I could not see the

connection between what I was learning and what I would someday be teaching. As I continued

in my work as a private tutor, and eventually in my Student Teaching, I realized that, as a result

of my Hunter coursework, I had a much deeper understanding of the math. In particular in the

areas of divisibility, thanks to Math 620 and 630: Math From An Advanced Perspective, and

Euclidean Geometry, thanks to Math 633: Axiomatic Geometry.

I recall a unit in Math 620 which dealt with rational and irrational numbers. As I thought

about the definition of a rational number, a number which can be expressed as a quotient of two

integers, I realized that up to that point I had thought that = 22/7 and that the approximation of

3.14 was simply 22/7 rounded to the nearest hundredth. But that was a contradiction to what I

also knew-- that is an irrational number. If is irrational, it cannot be expressed as a fraction.

Therefore, 22/7 must also be an approximation of . Somehow I had missed that fact in both high

school and in my undergraduate work.

Not only did my Hunter coursework clear up misconceptions that I had, it helped me in

the teaching of mathematics to my high school students. For the student who wants to know why

the product of the slopes of two perpendicular lines is -1, I can show them the relationship

between a point on a line and its image after a ninety degree rotation. I can express algebraically

why we need only to look at the last two digits of an integer to determine whether or not it is
divisible by the number four. Having this deeper understanding and the ability to represent a

concept in a different way helps with student comprehension and retention of the material.

As a result of my coursework at Hunter, both my knowledge of the learning process and

of the subject matter has improved, resulting in a newfound confidence in my abilities to both

create and deliver rich academic lessons.