# Quod Erat Demonstrandum

## 2008/11/24

### what an abundant Saturday

Filed under: Family,Report — johnmayhk @ 4:13 下午
Tags:

What an abundant Saturday (2008-11-22).

In the morning, I’d attended the seminar organized by the Hong Kong Association for Science and Mathematics Education (香港數理教育學會). Both speakers were vice principals, mr. 葉志豪 and mr. 潘偉強 shared something about the students’ performance in recent CE mathematics paper one and two. Although mathematics teachers may found the subject matter discussed was quite familiarized, it was still very useful for us, teachers, to adjust the way of teaching.

Some topics were not taught deeply in the syllabus but students may come across, as for example, polar coordinates and centres of triangles.

The topic of polar coordinate system was discussed in a short period of time in F.1, and there will be no further discussion throughout the following years. For centres of triangles, like centroid, circum-centre, in-centre, students had seen them in F.3, but the way of teaching may not fully equip them to cope with problems like: is circumcentre always lie inside the triangle, say. They suggested that teachers should not spend much time going into details in junior forms, just give extra exercises during the revision sections in F.5 classes.

In the Question and Answer part, one teacher (not a young one) queried something about the marking scheme of a mathematics CE paper.

1. Why 3 marks should be granted to the following easy question?

Simplify $\frac{a^3b^{-2}}{a^5}$ (sorry, I forget about the exact indices)

2. Why not giving 0.5 mark or setting the total score of mathematics paper to be 200 for detailed marking?

The speakers expressed their opinions, many teachers just felt relaxing and laughed, but I looked at the questioner’s face, he was taking it so serious, no smile.

OK, I don’t say too much, just feel a bit annoying about the OSM (on-screen marking).

What a ‘kai’ guy I was, I wore a hat and brought my heavy guitar to attend that seminar. Then I ran to join my wife to attend another 3-hour seminar. The topic was “好丈夫好太太是訓練出來的”. The speaker was 理盧幼慈教授. More than 300 people took part in the talk.

I suggested this seminar to my wife because I think it is worthwhile. Joining the talk was not representing that we have some problems in marriage, it is just a kind of reflection.

My wife and I also felt that we learnt something useful in the talk, as for example “Same day request is always no". Norma Leben (理盧幼慈) was still presenting in a humorous way, though it was the 40th (something) talk on the same topic, she claimed. “Power of the last speaker" is an old ‘trick’ I’d come across some times ago. Anyway, it was joyful to take seminar together with my wife.

After the seminar, my wife and I went to a friend’s home to have some practice about the singing performance in a wedding ceremony. I had not played my guitar for ages, I felt a bit pain in my fingers. We finished the practice in more than one and a half hour, then my wife and I had a rich dinner and she needed to buy accessaries for the wedding. Urm, quite a lot of time spent. But it was comprehensible, it was a great chance to be ‘free from our son’ and did something hurry!

Getting home, we were really exhausted.

## 2 則迴響 »

1. 容我指出一個常見文法錯誤.
I felt a bit “painful" in my fingers.

迴響 由 lanven — 2008/11/25 @ 1:44 上午 | 回覆

2. Thank you lanven, 受教了。

迴響 由 johnmayhk — 2008/11/25 @ 10:38 上午 | 回覆