Reading Response and Reflection
This week I chose the following reading:
In this paper, Fernandes & Healy examined how the mathematical practices of exploring symmetrical figures compared in two research objects - first object being the student who had no visual memories and second was the student who had more recently lost their vision.
Stop, Wonder & Reflect- One major point that stood out for me throughout reading this article is how much we rely on our sense of vision in basically all areas of mathematics. The use of other senses including that of smell ,touch, and hearing is very rare in our classroom. I was very much intrigued by the use of touch in the examples provided in this article.
“ We noticed, in particular, that both subjects explored the geoboard and the figures displayed upon it in similar ways, moving their hands successively from the outside to the inside and back again, with an initial tendency to move their hands together, following symmetrical trajectories – something we had by no means anticipated when planning the tasks.” ( Fernandes & Healy, 2013)
This made me stop and wonder about the importance of use of touch and other multifaceted ways of learning for our students. Especially when it comes to symmetry we are so much dependent on visual identification of the axis of symmetry that we hardly pay attention to what symmetry could feel like through touch. It was interesting to read about the hand movement of participants as they explore the symmetry on the geoboard.
As an extension to this wondering, I asked my 4 yr old to close her eyes and presented her with two different shaped pieces of clothes (pajamas and shirt) and asked her to show me how she will fold them into half. Folding into half is a relatively new concept for me as she has just begun to assist me in folding clothes after laundry. It was very interesting to see how we used her hands to try to feel the texture and identify the design and pattern to identify the lines of symmetry to fold them into half. The pajama that I had given her had a particular design on one leg and not the other. She was very frustrated when exploring the pajama with her hand, she kept on repeating that this leg feels very different so she can't fold it. I was very impressed by her ability to use her hand movements to touch and explore the clothes without having seen them.
Activity Reflection
For this week’s activity, I really enjoyed the process of making hexaflexagons with paper.
I havent had a chance to make Flex Mex hexaflexagon burrito, but I would definitely like to try that next time we are making burritos.
Adding hands-on mathematical activities and having them learn from real 3D living things and/or objects with shape, texture, smell, taste, etc makes the learning more accessible to all students including the one that may have sensory impairment. Such activities provide them opportunities to use their physical senses other than vision or hearing. Senses of touch, taste and smell are very rarely explored in a mathematical classroom. My 4 yr old daughter definitely prefers eating a heart shaped sandwich as opposed to traditional square or rectangular ones. Its about what appeals to her eyes - that makes it more tasty. And the opposite of this is true as well.
The whole process of making a symmetrical hexaflexagon shaped burrito or wrap is so much more involving and hands on than simply drawing a 2-D image of hexaflexagon. It draws students’ attention and sparks interest in not just simply learning about the shape but also about the size and the angles involved as well.
Hi Kanwaljit
ReplyDeleteI found it really interesting that your daughter was frustrated by the different textures of her pajamas. In my article, it mentioned that using different textures to represent other attributes such as colour can cause sensory overload for a visually impaired student. It sounds to me like those different textures of the pajamas caused a similar problem for your daughter.
I agree with you that we tend to rely on our sense of sight when performing mathematical tasks, and that to incorporate other senses would enrich the task for all students. To be honest though, I'm still not confident on how I could do that, especially as the math becomes more abstract. For example, exponent laws. How can we incorporate other senses into such an abstract concept?
I like how you got your daughter to experiment with this week's topic! I have a 5 and 8 year old and now I'm interested in getting them to try folding laundry with their eyes covered - I can imagine the mix of fun and frustration that might result.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting (and makes sense) that the blind students moved their hands along the symmetrical objects in a symmetrical/coordinated fashion - I expect feeling the same feature on the left and right at the same time would provide better information as opposed to for example using only one hand and touching first one side and then the other side to notice similarities.
I wonder if the researchers noticed any differences in the approaches/techniques of the subjects that had no memory of vision vs subjects with memory of vision?