Thursday - Real-Life Applications of Mathematics

Dear Diary,

I guess you can imagine Thursday is that fretful day every student fears. Well for me being in Ms. Aguilar classes sometimes mean stations. You heard it, Math stations. Ms. Aguilar loves to do stations and more on Thursdays when she sees us for three full periods. Yikes, but don't worry it isn't bad as I make it seem. Ms. Aguilar enjoys separating the room with color and letters.

A red M stands for: Math with Someone

A blue A stands for: At Work on My Own

A gray T stands for: Teacher Time

A purple H stands for: Hands-On: Manipulation

This is where Ms. Aguilar implements real world problems with the topics we learned and that day's lesson was expressions. Dios mío, las expresiones son tan difíciles! What that day dealt with is that everyone gets mixed up meaning Ms. A separates us by our grades. You may think she’s separating us by good grades students vs bad grade students but that's not the case. Ms. Aguilar has a procedure where she see our progress in our test, homework, participation and combines those who have a low range with a high range and with opposite personalities. For example, my best friend Emiliano is super smart but he is always someone who does the tiniest mistakes but Diana double checks her work and is super quick which is why Emely fits well in that crew because she struggles a bit so she takes a longer time which will slow down Diana and help her peers out.

There is always three rules in MATH centers/stations

1. Never disrespect your peers and always help each other.

2. You cannot move on to another station till the timer runs out.

3. Whatever is not finished will be for homework.

Math with someone is my favorite station because it deals with working on problems with paper and pencil with your group. Everyone can collaborate together and sometimes the word problems Ms. Aguilar implements in that station is very difficult and after we are done we input our work into the google survey to see how many we get correct and then we have to do the corrections on the one we got wrong. Ms. a motto on her walls, “Always try to succeed, never be satisfied with just an okay”. 

The second is not my favorite station because it deals with watching videos and working on the problems on our own. Ms. Aguilar says that when we are adults there will be times that we have to depend on ourselves and the internet could be a useful tool to help us solve real life problems like fixing a spare part in our cars or building a table or chair or creating new recipes that we looked at through the internet. Ms. Aguilar also mentions in college there won't be anyone to hold our hand or our parents won't be aware of the opportunities like scholarships so it is our duty to focus and become independent step by step. 

The third is teacher time for Ms. Aguilar is an important station because we have a one-to-one discussion where we can ask questions about the activity and problem we do with her and of the other stations. I usually bother her but Ms. Aguilar always tells me it's “a good sign” because its mean I am willing to learn and prevent any mistakes. 

The fourth and usually a fun activity is the hands on where we use crayons, tiles, or even cut outs to represent our world problems. It is usually fun when we have to find some of the materials we need because usually our time is running out when we get to the last station. Sometimes we work as a group or individually depending if the problem is difficult or easy. I love station work usually but expression was a bit difficult but having teacher time with Ms. Aguilar cleared up some of the misunderstanding I had which helped me fix the problem I had wrong in the other stations. 

            Another video that shows another type of math station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLWdy29WO38

One fun fact about the real world problems Ms.Aguilar provides us is that it mentions our names or situations we encounter on a daily basis which makes me laugh when I read them. Remember in my diary entry for Monday I mention a project that Ms. Aguilar told us to do about writing about ourselves, well Diego wants to be a baker when he gets older so one of the questions was:

Diego is a baker who makes the same number of loaves of bread each day. He uses 5 cups of flour in each loaf of bread. Write an expression to represent the number of cups of flour he uses each day making bread.When Diego reads upon his name he says it's nice to see how Ms. Aguilar remembers his passion of becoming a baker. 

Another useful tool Ms. Aguilar input into her teaching is money monopoly. She uses the method a lot when it deals with adding and subtracting decimals and integers  because she knows how important education is for us and our family. She would inform us of our salary each month and she would give us the task to give her a list on how much we spend whether it be clothes, food and necessities. It is so fun because she educates us on how adults receive bonuses or how everything could be expensive if we are not wise with money and how everything can fall apart if we don't know the basic skills like adding, subtracting, multiplication and dividing.

“We have calculators but you shouldn’t always rely on technology because it will let you down whether it be now or later. You always have to strive for independence until there is a point in life when you use technology as your last resource.”

For some of my peers doing math is easy as pie but what gives them a hard time is English. One problem that occurred on that Thursday in Math stations was Jose. He never spoke with his group and I believe Ms. Aguilar was having trouble communicating with his parents that on that day Ms. Aguilar was speaking in private with Jose. In our case when Ms. Aguilar talks “in private” is usually the following: something is wrong with behavior, or you have a problem that cannot be discussed in public. I bet Jose was just that person that needed to be asked about why wouldn't he talk or why wouldn't he work and why wasnt his parents getting in touch with her. What I have heard from Diego who sits with Jose is that he was opening himself a bit more but the problem was that he recently moved to the USA and he wasn't accustomed to English. He knows a few words here and there and the lesson Ms Aguilar was easy because he went over in his country but the language was very difficult. He wasn't doing well in station sis because everything is written in English. Diego and I think that Ms. Aguilar was informed and so now she puts directions in Spanish for him but also reminds him that he should read the English and Spanish version of both so she can finish the station. 

Ms. Aguilar real-world problems in math were very important for her. She always wanted us to understand how to solve them. Before she introduced the station to us she went over tips on how we can figure out word problems and we wrote them in our dictionary. She always said to highlight key words and understanding them will always help us what to do for them. I really enjoy the help Ms. Aguilar gives us and her stations really enforce each learning ability whether it be visual, auditory or kinesthetic learning. It all helps us improve in our academics because after learning those tips in Math class it helped me improve my English class but please don’t tell my English teacher.