Andy
When I try to teach my boy of 11 years, I explained it by virtue of
something in the garden for the moon, and something at the pharmacy --
about 2km away, for the Sun.He raised his eyebrows with astonishment.
OK well, that was an approximation.
Carol
On 20 June 2013 12:42, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
OK, I had a read of this paper on teaching the phases of the Moon.
I admit I found the challenge fascinating. The results of
surveying the beliefs of 14 to 17 year-olds astounded me, but I
learnt about the "encapsulated" nature of school learning during
my brief life as a maths teacher in London in the early '70s,
teaching maths in the metric system to kids who, like their
parents, used only the old Imperial system of measures outside
school. I will never forget the complaint from a student that how
could they do their work when their lousy school didn't provide
rulers with kilometers marked on them.
While I looked forward to hearing how the problem was solved in
the three different famous methodologies of learning, but unless I
am even dumber than I already know I am, all we got were
hypothetical reconstructions based on variations of the famous
triangle. It may be just me, but graphic diagrams like this just
do nothing but confuse me. Anyway, no solutions to the task were
offered, so far as I could see.
I have never had the joy of trying to teach the phases of the Moon
to a school class, but I know how I would do it, and it wouldn't
involve using those little diagrams in the text books (I liked
Yrjo's critique of those diagrams though. That was the best part).
Surely there must be some teachers on this list who have taught
the phases of the Moon. How did you do it?
Andy
mike cole wrote:
I am looking for an article by Jean Schmittau that gives a clear
explanation of Davydov's approach to math
education that has excessible examples for the use of the
"germ cell" idea
in practical (effective!) early
math instruction. Meantime, this paper by Yrjo also contains a
good summary
of Davydov's ideas applied to the
problem of phases of the moon, a problem some of us just might
have some
trouble explaining to a kid (!)
mike
http://people.ucsc.edu/~gwells/Files/Courses_Folder/documents/EngestromPhases-Moon.pdf
<http://people.ucsc.edu/%7Egwells/Files/Courses_Folder/documents/EngestromPhases-Moon.pdf>
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*Andy Blunden*
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Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden
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Carol A Macdonald Ph D (Edin)
Developmental psycholinguist
Academic, Researcher, and Editor _EditLab.net_
Honorary Research Fellow: Department of Linguistics, Unisa