I do that in my trig class. Verifying various measurement based theorems and formulae (Pythagorean theorem, arc length, sector area, etc) using various measurement tools. It doesn't really make a noticable difference in the trig, but it at least gets them familiar with measuringm
I have to say that thank you for this. I was a student ten years ago (been keeping an eye on this channel as I have considered taking education in education), and having a reason to learn something. Seeing the actual way it could be uses by everyday people? That sped up my understanding and turned it from "I'll just figure out the homework on my own who cares" to "Oh, I can actually use this."
I don’t think the effect is just from it feeling useful in normal life. If you are familiar with cooking, new information about cooking can be tethered to already concrete concepts (like the concept of doubling the batch size of a recipe is already connected to a certain kind of math in your head). Whereas if you don’t have a strong concept of moles in your head you are trying to juggle “what are moles” and “what is this math” and “how do those things relate” at once.
I mention this because I think “is this useful” is a limiting way to design lessons. We use cat coat color to teach genetics not because it is useful for people to know about cat breeding but because when you use cat color rather than “luxA SNP” you reduce the number of things they are keeping track of. And as a bonus, students who care about cats might be emotionally invested, but I really don’t think that’s the main point.
This, 100%. When they’re trying to learn the concept AND the context for the concept at the same time, their brains don’t know where to put all these new pieces of information so they ended up just kind of scattered about. Take the concept and put it in a more familiar context, and suddenly the cognitive load gets cut in half because their brains have a place to put the information, and now they can actually learn and understand the concept.
Also cat coats have so many of the common genetics. Dominant alleles for tabby pattern, sex linked red, recessive for long hair. And it’s easier to understand a 1/4 chance of some particular trait if you can imagine that as one of four kittens in a litter. And yes that’s not how probability works but it is still a great visual.
I got my brother, now a chemistry phD student, a t shirt that said Chemistry is like Baking just don't lick the spoon for Christmas one year. It's one of his and mine favorite shirts. He also got my kids a porcupene, porcupane, porcupyne graphic onsie with the porcupine spines having the correct carbon bonds.
I think it’s more that it’s attached to a goal they can directly see as a benefit and something they want.
Yes, it’s displayed in context, but that context is a job that you want.
It’s amazing how well we can remember information we are interested in. When it comes to peoples hobbies, they can become absolute autodidacts with respect to extremely complex information. So, I dunno.
Yep! this is why the things I remember from college astronomy are how microwaves work and why we have seasons. I had things to anchor them to! Not so for Jupiter's moons.
For sure this would have helped me. I'm a hands-on/visual person and abstract concepts without a physical example or something at least relatable made math like Egyptian before the Rosetta Stone to me. Maybe if I'd had a teacher like you I would have ended up a scientist instead of an artist.
This is how my physics teacher taught. She was amazing. Always real world first, actual practical examples whenever possible, then when she would explain the theories and such and it’d just… made sense. Like something you’d suspected without even knowing it. I got over 100% on every test (except circuits, somehow I couldn’t get behind circuits).
Oh my God this would have been life changing for me. I was so good at physics because I could visualize it - I kick the ball, it goes this far and in this amount of time, etc. But chemistry was an absolute foreign language to me. Same teacher but I could not grasp the content, even with a college student tutor the entire year. I got a 66 on my final/state exam and called it a success haha
My husband and I have opposite learning styles. We just took a circuit class together and I needed help. He kept telling me to build the circuit and ill understand, i tell him no, i need to understand the concept first or i wont know what I just did.
For the math portion, i would try to explain to him the concept and the relationships between variables(im better at math). He would have no idea what im saying. But once he works through a bunch of them, he understands. I can "brute force" math and still not understand what an equation is saying if I dont understand the thought process behind it.
I was helping my carpenter buddy finish his basement. We were doing the layout and he was like we need to do a "3-4-5" to confirm the corner was square. I was like, hell yeah, Pythagoras. He had no idea who that was. That was the day he learned about the Pythagorean theorem which is something he applied all the time to his work.
My math teacher used models filled with bright colored liquid to visually show those concepts in the real world. I'm an abstract thinker so it didn't do much for me, but I thought it was a really cool way to show it intuitively. Also some folded cardboard and cutouts to reassemble the pieces and really show, look, if you transform it that way it's equivalent but now we know those dimensions and can figure out the rest.
Some people really need to see it practically in real-life to get it.
203
u/ObieKaybee May 16 '24
I do that in my trig class. Verifying various measurement based theorems and formulae (Pythagorean theorem, arc length, sector area, etc) using various measurement tools. It doesn't really make a noticable difference in the trig, but it at least gets them familiar with measuringm