Project Work

Home Workshop
What do I want to know more about?

Do: Saturday, May 23rd.

Objective: TLW advance work on the first class project, investigating a topic of interest.

Schema Activation: What would improve the project as it now stands? Writing? Illustrations? More examples?
Is there good consolidation in the reflection/summary?

Focus: Project Requirements: investigate an integral calculus question of your own construction. Ideally the
question should be original to your group, or a problem of your own design.
A. Originality 20%. This should be a problem that you do not already or immediately know how to do,
or a topic that you wish to learn more about. Recommended: address your interest in or exposure to
this problem/topic in aan introduction.
B. Presentation of project 40%. The project should result in a typed expository paper. Pictures may be
hand-drawn if too difficult to produce. Maple is fair game for computations and graphing.
C. Mathematical worth 40%. This should be addressed throughout the paper, either in importance or
relevance of the content or as an opportunity to engage your problem solving or reasoning. This
should also be addressed in your summary or reflection of your project in terms of what you (either as
a group or each writing individually) got out of your work.

Groups should include a section addressing division of labor – who did what?

Due: May 26th. (No class 25th for Memorial Day.)

Activity:
1. Be sure your topic and group are posted on BB>DiscussionBoard. Questions can be posted there or
emailed to the instructor.
2. Work on your project.
3. Write results.
4. Edit/revise your work.

Reflection: How well did you address the project needs you identified in the schema activation?

Assignment workshops from Dr. John Golden

Son of Better, Deeper
Home Workshop
What is worth more attention?

Do: Friday, May 15th.

Objective: TLW choose an activity, problem set or some of their work that would benefit from further
attention, and give it that attention.

Schema Activation: What from this third week would you like to think about some more? If you’re
comfortable with your understanding of all topics, well, wow!, but then you could revise and polish up some
of your communication from another workshop.

Focus: Three things:

1) One of the goals for this class is for you to be a self-sufficient learner of mathematics. This requires
self-evaluation of understanding, and time to choose to address that need. If you need a suggestion
for where to find a problem in that area or a resource to help, contact the instructor.
(goldenj@gvsu.edu).
2) Students who haven’t had choice often interpret choice as “Oh, I don’t have to do this.” What I
mean is, “you have to do something, but I trust you to find what makes sense for you to address.” I
am very willing to help you find what would be good for you, if this feels too challenging. In a very
real sense you may have been disempowered by traditional instruction.
3) Revision: The goals of a revision are to make your thinking more explicit, and to highlight your
process. Questions you may wish to consider as you reread and review your work:
a. Are you showing your work or sharing your thinking? (There’s a difference.)
b. Do you justify your answers and/or describe why you did what you did?
c. Do you include false starts or places where you consulted a resource (person, text, etc.) for help?
d. Identify two areas of improvement you would like to address in this draft.
e. Rewrite your workshop, keeping in mind your communication.
Take into account your feedback from the first portfolio turn in. What is an area of growth for you?

Activity: Choose either to extend your work on something from the week to which you would like to attend,
finish something you had to dotdotdot, or revise something with an eye towards it being an exemplar for the
portfolio.

Reflection: Did you make a good choice? How do you know?

Post on blackboard what your choice was and your response to the questions above. Post by Tue. 5/26, 10
am.

Make Up Math
Third Workshop
Attend to one of the workshops from Day 11: the trig substitution skill or the arc length problem.

Assignment workshops from Dr. John Golden