Date of Award

1-2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

College/School

College of Science and Mathematics

Department/Program

Mathematical Sciences

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Nicole Panorkou

Committee Member

Mika Munakata

Committee Member

Teo Paoletti

Abstract

This study focuses on a teaching experiment with 33 six-graders in a Kearny public school in Hudson County, New Jersey, during the 2017-2018 academic year. More specifically, this study explored a) the types of tasks and tools that can be used to develop students’ covariational and correspondence reasoning in learning about shadows and b) the nature of students’ reasoning about covariation and correspondence relationships as students engage in the use of tools and tasks. The results showed that the simulation and the tasks I designed had the students engaged in the learning process. Students were able to reason about the characteristics of an object’s shadow, construct covariational relationships between the angle of the sun and the length of the shadow for objects and reason about the correspondence relationships between the height of objects and the length of their shadows. The study presented here was intended to explore the ways that we could incorporate simulations into students’ learning of shadows and time that would help develop students’ mathematical thinking of ratio and proportion.

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