Group Micro-teaching Reflection


As the lesson was only 15 minutes long, our group discussed which concept to cover in our curricular micro-teaching. We chose the concept of arithmetic sequences that is introduced in the B.C.’s new grade-10 math curriculum, because we thought that the concept is quickly delivered in a short amount of time. However, we encountered the most difficult challenge. It was not about the level of difficulty of the course material that we struggled to explain, but the time management. Before the presentation, we thought that we would have enough time to cover the history of Gauss, derivation of formulas, and the in-class activity. It took us, however, more time to derive formulas than we expected, and we only had few minutes to do the in-class activity, “mathe-magic”, which we felt was the most exciting part of our presentation. Overall, I think our group planned well our entire lesson, but we should have cut our presentation shorter so that every audience had a chance to participate the activity that we prepared.

 

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Due to lack of time, I was not able to reveal the trick behind the “mathe-magic” based on the Fibonacci sequence in our presentation, so here it is:

Let’s say Person A chose the following two random numbers, m and n as the first two terms of the Fibonacci sequence. Then, the complete sequence up until tenth term is:

m, n, m+n, m+2n, 2m+3n, 3m+5n, 5m+8n (7th term), 8m+13n, 13m+21n, 21m+34n

The total sum is 55m+88n, which is 11 times the seventh term.

Using the above “trick”, one can quickly find the sum of the sequence, once Person A has written his or her seventh term.

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