We survived !!

I’m going to be completely honest, when I first saw that I was paired with Christina I was extremely nervous. I was always a good math student, but I haven’t studied math since senior year of high school. When I was substitute teaching in a freshman math class this year, I couldn’t even help my students work their graphing calculators. I was convinced I was going to fail this project and I had no idea what to expect. What kind of a text would I be assigned to read that was about math!?! I was also extremely unsure about how to explain my metacognitive process. I also have NEVER blogged before, so this whole assignment seemed overwhelming and like Dr. Johnson was personally out to get me (just kidding, Dr. Johnson!).

As the first half of this assignment started, I began to second guess the texts I had chosen within my discipline. The Yellow Wallpaper is a great short story, but it can be extremely confusing and frustrating to work with. If I was getting frustrated with it at some points, I could only imagine how Christina was going to feel, considering this is so out of her element. I was hoping she would have a good experience with the texts I chose (Which after reading her blog posts, I think she did !!)

As the weeks went on, I felt more comfortable with blogging and explaining my reading process to the “online world” (which is probably just of Christina and Dr. Johnson). I was surprised at how successful I was with testing out new strategies, like the week that I sketched my way through the reading of The Yellow Wallpaper. I will definitely encourage my future students to use different strategies in their reading, especially ones that are out of their comfort zone. I also think that it is important to read texts outside of your comfort zone as Christina and I did over the past three weeks. I think that we both learned more about ourselves as readers through working with texts of a different discipline. I think that working with different disciplines in this assignment can help all of us as future teachers, especially with the new focus on interdisciplinary work as per Charlotte Danielson and the new curriculum. 

This assignment has really opened up my eyes to different reading strategies, and how important it is to take note of your reading process. By asking questions, doing research, collaborating with peers, and applying different techniques readers can really strengthen their reading skills as well as open themselves up to absorbing so much more than they normally would. I am so glad that I was paired with Christina for this assignment, because I learned a lot from her posts and different outlook on the texts we worked with. I think that after this project I can honestly say that English and Math can live happily ever after with one another!

 

The end of “The Seventh Night”

Before finishing up the chapter, I reread my blog from last week to refresh my memory. The chapter continued with some “old friends” (or things Robert and the Number Devil had previously discussed in the book). I was not surprised by this, being that this had happened a few times during the chapter already (with the hopping numbers and triangular numbers). Robert exclaimed to the Number Devil,

“We’re back to Bonacci and the rabbit numbers”

 

I remembered reading about Bonacci when I had done some research about the hopping numbers, but I didn’t remember exactly what I read, so I looked up Bonacci again. I was a little bit confused, because the actual mathematical term (from what I found) is actually called Fibonacci numbers, but when I found a summary of this book, it said that the Number Devil shortened it to “Bonacci”. I found that Fibonacci numbers are an integer sequence used in math. This made sense of what I had just read in the chapter. I love The Number Devil’s response to Robert when he says:

“See how much we’ve packed into our triangle? And we could go on for days. But I have a feeling you’ve had enough”

This made me think of what Christina wrote on my blog post last week, how math is a continuation of concepts that build off of each other, and the importance of keeping that in mind. I love that the Number Devil wanted to make Robert aware of all of the different concepts they touched on within Pascal’s Triangle; this helped to refresh Robert’s memory as well as having him see the connections between the different parts of math. 

I was very confused by the ending of the chapter, and it left me asking a lot of questions. The Number Devil was beginning to say that he cannot stop doing math, and then the cubes started disappearing and “he grew thinner and thinner until they went off all together and he was only a shadow of his former self”. After this, Robert forgot everything that had just happened… the cubes, the triangle, the concepts and the Number Devil. I’m assuming that this would make more sense if I had read the entire story. Does Robert forget everything at the end of each chapter? Is the Number Devil just a figment of Robert’s imagination or a dream? I am extremely curious!

When I was looking up images of Pascal’s triangle for my posts this week, I came across images on google that were student drawings and creations. This was exciting to me because it showed that teachers are actually using this text in their classrooms to help teach their students about different mathematical concepts! 

 

The Seventh Night (Part 2)

The first thing I did before continuing to read this chapter was to reread what I blogged last week, to refresh my memory. As I began to continue with my reading, I was very excited to see that Robert seemed to be picking up on the “tricks” of the triangle they were creating. Robert said:

“I can see that the numbers along the sides will be all ones no matter how far down we go. And that I can fill in the numbers in the next diagonal rows on either side without doing the arithmetic because they’ll  just be the perfectly normal numbers: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7…”

 

I loved the enthusiasm that Robert showed during this part of the chapter. After coming to this realization, he climbed up the triangle and began to fill in the numbers that he knew. At this point in my reading, I started thinking how beneficial the images throughout the chapter were for the reader. My assumptions are that many people reading this book are people that are not familiar with the math topics being covered. Without these pictures, it would be a lot more difficult to envision the proper triangle being created by Robert and The Number Devil. 

The next part of the chapter confused me a bit, and I had to do some outside research. After Robert filled in the triangle as much as he could, he was prompted by The Number Devil to see what numbers belong in the diagonal row, next to the “1,2,3,4,5,6,7…” row. 

“A knowing smile came over the number devil’s face as Robert read down the row from right to left. ‘1,3,6,10… Hey, they look familiar.’ ‘Coconuts!’ cried the number devil”

 

“Wait, What?” was basically my exact reaction at this point of reading. Why is The Number Devil talking about coconuts… what did I miss!?!?!? I turned to google, and found out that on the fifth night (the fifth chapter of the book) Robert ends up in a desert, and he learns about triangular numbers. The Number Devil teaches this concept by using coconuts. Here is an image I found online that illustrates the concept of triangular numbers

 

After this became clear to me, I really appreciated the connection between the chapters. This shows that Robert truly understood what he had previously learned. It also shows readers the connections that can be made between different mathematical concepts. I then continued reading, and saw that once The Number Devil refreshed Robert’s memory on the previous concept, he was able to use the “Wait, What? Coconut Method” to complete the next row of diagonal numbers. As Robert filled in more numbers, they began getting to be very large numbers. Robert was concerned that he was not able to do this kind of math in his head. The Number Devil was able to fill in the rest of the triangle with a “flash”.

As I continued reading, I remembered Christina’s blog about the different blocks and numbers lighting up. The Number Devil turned off the lights in the room, and lit up the top number of the triangle. He had Robert add up the second line, and then the third, which Robert stated was easy, and that he remembered their “friends” the hopping twos (which I blogged about last week and Christina clarified for me!). 

I stopped my reading for the week here, and am very eager to read the end of this chapter. So far, it has been very refreshing to read something that I would not typically read. I love reading different styles of writing, and I have to say I have never read a book about math before. The continuous connections throughout the book is a very great strategy that the author uses, and will be very beneficial for the students that are reading it. It will help them to understand that the mathematical concepts that they learn are important, and will keep popping up as they learn more advanced math. 

 

 

 

Let’s talk about math, baby…

The first thing that I did before starting to read, “The Seventh Night” from The Number Devil, was to skim over Christina’s past blog posts on the chapter. I wanted to refresh my memory being that I am so unfamiliar with the topic. Next, before reading, I did a little bit of research about Pascal’s Triangle. I know that this mathematical number pattern, but that is where my knowledge ended. I wanted to have a better understanding of the topic before reading the story, and I found a very useful website that explained the number pattern in a somewhat simple way. 

The website states: “One of the most interesting Number Patterns is Pascal’s Triangle (named after Blaise Pascal, a famous French Mathematician and Philosopher).

To build the triangle, start with ‘1’ at the top, then continue placing numbers below it in a triangular pattern. Each number is the two numbers above it added together (except for the edges, which are all ‘1’). (Here I have highlighted that 1+3 = 4) “

It amazed me how intricate the triangle could become, while forming other triangles within it (like the Sierpinski Triangle, that forms when you color the odd and even numbers) Thanks to the website (that I’ll post below!) I understood the basics of Pascal’s Triangle, and felt comfortable to begin my reading of the chapter. 

http://www.mathsisfun.com/pascals-triangle.html

When I started to read this chapter, I was immediately curious about the first six chapters of the book. I’m very curious to see how Robert and the Number Devil became acquainted, and plan to look that up! 

I love the mathematical references throughout the chapter; when Robert and the Number Devil began building the pyramid, Robert says

“And you get sixteen. A hopping number. A two that’s been made to hop four times: 2^4”

 

I am assuming that this is referencing something from a previous chapter that perhaps, the Number Devil taught to Robert. It is great for the students reading this book to see the reinforcement of different forms of math throughout the story. I think that the images in the chapter that I have seen so far are extremely helpful to students (and readers like me!) that are not as knowledgeable of math. 

Something that I noticed while reading, was that the language used throughout the chapter is not extremely difficult. I think it is important to keep this as an “easy” read, being that the text is teaching a math technique. If the language used were more “textbook-ish” I don’t think that it would have as much of an effect on the students reading it. If I were going to be a math teacher, I think that I would definitely like to incorporate texts like The Number Devil into my classes, to help my students better understand certain mathematical theories and formulas. I am really looking forward to continue reading the chapter, and learn more about Robert’s adventure with Pascal’s Triangle. 

 

 

 

Ernest Hemingway

Sorry for the delay on my blog… I was dealing with a family emergency last week!!

 

After finishing up “The Yellow Wallpaper”, I moved on to reading a short story by Ernest Hemingway called, “Hills Like White Elephants”. This week, I found myself going back to my regular note taking (as opposed to the sketching strategy I tried out last week). While reading this short story, I found myself having to do a lot more outside research than I did with the previous text.

Right off the bat, the text talks about, “the hills across the valley of the Ebro”. I found in my research that the Ebro is a river on the Iberian Peninsula in Spain; it is the second longest river in Spain. The first paragraph informs readers that the two characters (An American girl and a man) are traveling from Barcelona to Madrid. 

As I took notes while reading the story, I had a lot of questions. The dialogue between the girl, whose name is Jig, and the man in the story seems very ambiguous. It seems as if each time Jig brings up the hills, that she likens to white elephants, that the man changes the subject. He brushes her off when she brings up the hills, by saying that he has never seen white elephants before. It jumped out at me how much alcohol the two characters were drinking on this train ride. Out of nowhere, the man says to Jig, 

“‘It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,’ the man said. ‘It’s not really an operation at all.’” 

The man then continues to tell Jig that after this procedure is done, things will be fine, just as it was before. He says that this was the only thing that has caused them problems, and they could be happy when this was all over. At this point, I began to think that maybe they were talking about an abortion, but I was unsure because of the alcohol being consumed throughout the story. Then I began to realize that this was published in 1927, when women were not 

steered away from drinking during pregnancy… at this point the story started to fall into place. Jig wonders if the man will love her once things go back to normal, and he tells her that he loves her now, and will still love her then. At this point in the story, I definitely thought that Jig and the man were discussing the fact that she got pregnant and they were considering an abortion. 

The story ends with the following quote:

” ‘Do you feel better?’ he asked.
‘I feel fine,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.’ “

This ending follows suit with the ambiguity of the story. Hemingway does now come right out and say whether or not Jig decides to go through with the operation being discussed. I think that she decides to keep the baby; when she says “There’s nothing wrong with me”, that could mean that she is finally accepting her pregnancy. I love the fact that this story is up for interpretation of the reader. I think that different readers could see this story from different perspectives, which makes it truly unique and interesting.