Academically, the most powerful experience I can think of is going to Duke University the summer of my 6th grade year for the Duke Talent Identification Program, or TIP. For three weeks, I was immersed in college life. I lived in a dorm with two roommates, took classes taught by Duke students, and learned to reach out and ask for help. I took a pre-calculus course that focused on trigonometry. It was a ton of work, but we had tons of fun, too.
I remember two songs my class wrote when we were overwhelmed by everything we were learning and just needed a break!
(To the tune of "America the Beautiful")
Oh functions class
For spacious graphs
For amber waves of sine
For purple tangent majesty
Above the x-axes!
Oh functions class
Oh functions class
Elisa [my instructor] shed her grace on thee
And crown your graphs with labels
For Jill [the TA] will be grading these!
And the other one, to the tune of "I Saw the Sign" (one of the true jewels of the late '80s):
We graphed the sine
And it opened up our minds
We graphed the sine
Trig is demanding
But we've got understanding
We graphed the sine
And it opened up our minds
We graphed the sign
No one's gonna pull it down
Put it back on the graph where it belongs
But where does it belong?
This is a graph of the sine function:
It all comes from the Unit Circle!
Rachel, it's such a rich learning experience! I bet, you make your math class fun and easy to understand for your students! I believe that having teachers like you is a key to the student success in this sometimes difficult subject. I was lucky to have a really strong teacher in the middle school, and even up until now I can do basic math decently, despite being a language arts teacher :)
ReplyDeleteWow! I am so impressed: Duke TIP is so hard. At 6th grade. My god... I wonder - was it hard to be gifted as a child? and as an adult?
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