Week 18 - Calculus and Vectors

This week we were introduced to activities and teaching strategies that would be beneficial in a calculus and vectors course. Being the final math course offered, it can be daunting to teach and, in the case of the students, learn. This being said, the teaching strategy for teaching chain rule made teaching and learning simpler and more enjoyable. Lots of students struggle with chain rule, especially when there are multiple terms to differentiate with chain rule. This strategy uses shoe boxes and plastic fruit to illustrate the order of events for chain rule.

This strategy, and other visual strategies that help to illustrate abstract mathematical concepts are beneficial  to any and all math courses. They demonstrate how these concepts work and the use of these strategies help to make the entire experience more memorable. The chain rule is still fresh in my mind a couple of days after the strategy was presented. I wish I had this strategy shown to me in high school; it would have made it easier to remember how the order went in advanced questions in high school and university.

Some students might be skeptical at first as to how it relates to mathematics, but in the long run it would be better for our students to use visual/kinesthetic representations for learning. I hope to use this strategy, among many others, when I teach mathematics this next teaching block, and whenever I am fortunate enough to be placed in a math classroom.