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In-service program documentation
Tessellation inquiry experience -- Overview (D2.1)
Participants' feedback - Responses to an anonymous questionnaire

General prompt: In order to help us evaluate and improve the organization of the Summer Institute in the future, we would appreciate your written feedback on each of its major components (as listed below). Note that the sub-items listed under some of these components are intended to help you remember some key elements of these experiences - don't feel you have to address each sub-item separately !

Specific item addressed: Tessellation (Preliminary assignment of finding examples; Monday and Tuesday explorations and related assignments; Tuesday "Walk down memory lane"; "Can this work in the classroom ?" discussion on Tuesday)

Note: In what follows we have combined the responses of participants in Implementation B and C of the program, since they both experienced this activity in the same way it has been described in this section of the materials. Also, we have only reported the comments relevant to the tessellation inquiry experience from the participants' responses to this item.

-- Loved it! I learn best by doing and feel excited about starting the school year with this unit.

-- All the Tessellation discoveries were valuable

-- This was taught very well.

-- The small group discussion was very rich although the number of examples was cumbersome. Large group was OK […] I would've liked to have heard more discourse on the non-tess items as I'm convinced the road to learning includes "what it is" as well as "what it is not."

-- Preliminary assignment seemed to frustrate everyone just enough. Made us think. Modifying the definition took too long. Maybe getting group consensus took too long.

-- The tessellation activity from start to finish was captivating. The scope of the discussion was ever changing. This was an excellent vehicle to rattle our cages. We were made uncomfortable and unsure, but not necessarily due to lack of skill. It was more a shift in perspective. I found the comments by [the research mathematician participant] to be enlightening and reassuring.

-- I found this to be the most enjoyable part of the week. I'm sure the novelty of the topic had much to do with the benefits I derived from it. This will be the first unit I use in class because of its novelty. Just as I felt more interested because of the relative unfamiliarity of the material, I feel the kids will react the same way.

-- I enjoyed & found merit in all of the tessellation related activities. The preliminary assignment served well to develop our own judging criteria that we later defended in our group judgings.

-- Super. It helped to bring uncertainty to understanding of tessellations.

-- Wonderful! To go through whole experience was comforting. Now that we have begun teaching the unit, it is neat to see that the learners, then and now, weren't much different.

-- Too much discussion for me. I interpreted the definition differently than most of the group.

-- I thought the explorations and questions were good. I felt the large group discussion became repetitive. I also felt some questions were left unanswered also - but we did have limited time.

-- Sometimes frustrating; sometimes rewarding. Always a genuine learning experience!

-- I think the preliminary assignment was a great intro to the Summer Institute and really helped participants to start thinking about what a tessellation is. I think we needed to have more time to come up with conjectures. Talking about the definition of tessellation and whether or not it was OK to change it and also reading about interpreting a geometric figure were especially helpful. I had never really thought about the role of definitions in math before - at least not this extensively. I learned a lot.

-- I think this was the most helpful part of the institute.

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Return to list of materials about the "Tessellation inquiry experience -- Overview"