4.3. April 22, 2002

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."--Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

Class Announcements

• #1. Today we will have a chance to finish working on the group projects from last class.
  
• #2. After that, Ms. Lee will introduce us to polar coordinates.
  
• #3. At the end of class, we will get our new homework assignment, which will be due on Friday.
  
• #4. Get in the same groups as last time. Anyone who doesn't have a group should stand in the back. Remember: NO ISLANDS!
  

As noted before, NO ISLANDS means that all desks should be clustered together so the group physically is "together." By this time of year most students will do this without prompting, though a few need reminders.

Coordinate Systems Potpourri, Part 2

STAR testing means that this class is down to 50 minutes from the usual 100. The additional time constraint, plus likely student stress, means that I should be relatively "gentle" to the students.

Students will have time to wrap up their group projects and prepare for their presentations as per the directions on their activity sheets. All their previous work will be in the Resource Corner along with other materials so they can pick up where they left off. Students who missed the previous class (this always happens) will join a group of my choosing. I will check with these students periodically to make sure they have some sense of what's going on.

Each group will have to give feedback on another group's presentation: what went well, was it easy to understand, and a suggestion for improvement. This is to ensure some form of accountability, as students may not always pay close attention to each others' presentations (though assuredly more attention than they would to one of mine). The point of this activity is exposure to coordinate systems in an entertaining real-life context more than a particular knowledge of a particular coordinate system, most of which were student-devised anyway.

Polar Coordinates: Introduction

Students will receive the POLAR COORDINATES (GIF image) notes sheet and a sheet of polar graph paper, and be given a brief lecture introduction to polar coordinates using a "submarine sonar" example. I dislike lecture, but there's really not much point in "discovering" that the first coordinate is the distance (r) and the second coordinate is the angle in degrees (theta).

After that, they will have an opportunity to get started on HOMEWORK PACKET #2 (GIF image) and ask questions about anything that puzzles them. The homework, on reading and writing polar coordinates, attempts to introduce angles greater than 360 degrees, negative angle measurements, and "insane" angle measurements coupled with 0 radius. A number of the problems were adapted or taken from the Integrated Mathematics 3 Practice Bank, Practice 59 and Practice 60 (McDougall Littell, 1995).

If I knew where the misconceptions were, I would attempt to address them in advance, but I generally don't. Based on my few past experiences, I suspect that such "preventative" measures aren't much help until the misconceptions appear of their own accord. At least, on the few occasions I've attempted to "circumvent" a misconception it has appeared anyway in student work, and why wouldn't it? If a few well-placed words dislodged a misconception so readily, it probably wouldn't be much of an issue in the first place.

Copyright © 2002 Yoon Ha Lee <requiescat@cityofveils.com>
Last updated on 20 May 2002