In the first two weeks of school, we spent 5 days on 4 different activities to learn what it takes to be a mathematician, the use the habits of a mathematician as well as to get a more open-minded, creative type of thinking to solve the assignments for Week of Inspirational Math. On the first day, we were told to build shapes with a loop of rope and try to convince "skeptics", our teachers, that it was that specific shape that we chose to do. On the second day, we built equal stacks of pennies on a total of 6 different number visuals with only 100 pennies, On the third day, we had to cut a scalene triangle with one cut, and it couldn't be drawn on the edges of the paper. On the fourth, we tried to find a certain amount squares with a shape separated by multiple line segments. We watched videos as well, each portraying a different lesson to learn.
Along with the activities, Building Shapes, Number Visual Pennies, One-Cut Geometry, and Square Mania respectfully, there were five videos and the messages they shared were the many different ways to attack a problem, how speed was not important, how brains grow and change, how believing in yourself helps as well as how mistakes are important in math too. I found all of the videos to hold some what important messages for me, even if the video itself was cringey, It had some how managed to hit me personally. I have always struggled with math, and will continue to do so, but I always thought that speed counted, I never believed in myself, I've never really tried to find different ways to find the solution, and I was always afraid of mistakes. I have a fixed mind set but it was what I was taught up til now. Hopefully, this year will be different and I will be able to do math successfully.
From all of the activities, I took the most effort and had the most progress to the Building Shapes one. For this problem, we had a loop of rope, tied together at the ends, and we had to try to make shapes out of it. We could choose from a variety of shapes, but the challenging part of it was that we had to somehow convince skeptics, our teachers, that it was actually the shape we chose to make. We learned to be more skeptical and question everything as we had to use reasoning and proof to convince our teachers that we had the right shape in mind and in front of our eyes. It was a lot more difficult than I thought, as we tried the basic square before moving to a star as well as a tetrahedron. The process of having to figure out some of the more difficult shapes as well as find the words to explain it was an interesting experience.
For example, one of the ways we tackled the problem was that we tried the star by doing it in the way you would draw a star normally, line segments separating the shape so there's 5 triangles connected to the edges of a pentagon. It didn't count due to some of the rules of the assignment but then we would try to find equal lengths for all sides of the star as well as try to form the star out of our original idea by spreading the rope to the outer points while keeping the shape in place. One of the habits of a Mathematician I believe we used for this activity would have to be starting small as well as looking for patterns. I took the starting small with the square, slowly working our groups's way into more complicated shapes as well as more detailed explanations from our mistakes, and I used the looking for patterns habit when I listened to one group talk about the equal lengths for a square and tried to practice his explanation with our own shape before going back to our own ideas. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of our ideas but my team mate got one of me as well as my team member holding two of the corners of the square as we tried to explain why it was a square, we used the paper's 90 degree angle to show that the square was the same.