| Now the students had a foundation language to work with as they learned
more about matrices. Adding the vocabulary to theboard was supposed to
connect the visual to the actual word. What I discovered after viewing,
was that I did not write the definition on the board. Verbally the definition
was there, but there was no consistency as the class moved forward of
what was the actual definition. This is minor maybe but I wondered about
a major thing: if I were to ask the students to give me the meaning of
matrix, say, could they? Would it be fair of me to say that their meaning
was completely wrong if it was based on my verbal account of the word
without any written support? (taking out extraneous cases and meanings) |