ASSIGNMENT 2 - FORGETFULNESS

Forgetfulness

by Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrEPJh14mcU (Forgetfulness)

Forgetfulness… What is forgetfulness? Based on my understanding, forgetfulness is the tendency to forget or failure to remember or loss memory. The poem “forgetfulness” by Billy Collins is a nice poem, what the poem say is very true as people tend to forget this and that. This is because I myself sometimes also can forget this and that.

We can see that how unique is our brain. We can use our brain to store information and some others things in our daily life. Instead of remembering, we can also forgetting. Something that we store in our brain a long time ago can be forgotten, as we are not constantly using it. Like what is in the poem, we can forget how to swim or ride a bicycle when we are not use with it. So, this is not the long term memory. Forgetting can be reduced by repetition and/or more elaborate cognitive processing of information. When we constantly repeat the same process, it will stick to our mind and thus we will remember easily.

Looking at the word ‘forgetfulness’, now I realise that nobody is perfect, everyone can forget even a very small matter. ‘Forgetfulness’ can occur at any stage of age, anytime and anyone, not that only the aging people can forget.

So, as the educators, we must try to understand the students’ condition when they are in this situation-forgetfulness as this also occurs in the educators themselves.

Assignment 1 (Shulman's Categories For Knowledge Necessary For Teaching)

According to Shulman, he has list seven types of knowledge which are important and necessary for teaching.

In my opinion, I will say that content knowledge is the most important knowledge a mathematics teacher must have. Content knowledge means the concepts, principles, relationships, processes, and applications a person should know within a given academic subject, appropriate for his/her developmental age/grade level. Teachers must have a broad and comprehensive understanding of the subject and they must be able to deliver subject content in a competent and confident manner. By having an in depth knowledge of content, teachers will be able to cater for all ranges of ability with their student groups. Other than that, they can help the students to create useful cognitive maps, relate one idea to another, and address misconceptions. This is very important as we are looking on the knowledge necessary for teaching in mathematics. A mathematics teacher must fluency and care with mathematical language and notation. I have been told by my mathematics’ teacher that mathematics is a subject of concepts and logics when I’m in secondary school and I still remember it until today.

After a teacher having the content knowledge, he or she must have general pedagogical knowledge. Teach not only involves learning content and how to translate that subject matter into an understandable form. It also requires knowledge about the process to teaching itself. Pedagogical knowledge involves the classroom management and control. A teacher must have its own style in teaching that can attract the student to listen to the taught. As we know there are some students who scare of mathematics and think that mathematics is very hard. So teacher must motivate the students and tell them to be friend with mathematics. Since mathematics is a subject of concepts and logics, a teacher must has knowledge on how to deliver the concepts or theories to students so that they will have better understanding and know how or when to use it.

Teaching any subject in our country must follow the curriculum that has been plan by our government. So there are some particular materials like text books or any others materials that are suitable to use as the teaching materials. Every subject has its own syllabus and it is a need in the education of our country. Thus, a teacher must have the knowledge of curriculum.

Another type of knowledge that I also agree with Shulman is the knowledge of learner and their characteristics. Being a teacher, he or she must have self awareness on their behaviour. Why am I saying so? People always saying that parent should act as a role model to their children. Parents always being blame of the delinquency of teenagers. Since students spend almost half of the day in the school, so we cannot denied that the teachers also play an important role. Thus, teachers should aware of their behaviour in the classroom because it will affect how individuals learn.

Lastly, I would like to conclude that a mathematics teacher must able:
• Design mathematically accurate explanations that are comprehensible and useful for students
• Use mathematically appropriate and comprehensible definitions
• Represent ideas carefully, mapping between a physical or graphical model, the symbolic notation, and the operation or process
• Interpret and make mathematical and pedagogical judgments about students’ questions, solutions, problems, and insights (both predictable and unusual)
• Be able to respond productively to students’ mathematical questions and curiosities
• Make judgments about the mathematical quality of instructional materials and modify as necessary
• Be able to pose good mathematical questions and problems that are productive for students’ learning
• Assess students’ mathematics learning and take next steps

Creating a blog.....

This is my first time creating a blog, it is quite difficult for me. I believe that my classmates will have the same feeling as will. This blog was created for learning purpose of the course "Psychology in Mathematics Education". I have to ask my friend whose also my classmate to teach me how to create the blog as her blog is very nice and tidy. So a very much thank you to her. Haha.