One of the black humour aspects of ACARA’s promotion of its new curriculum, and the draft that preceded it, was ACARA declaring ad nauseum that the curriculum had been “refined” and “decluttered”. ACARA’s claim was then repeated ad more nauseum by education reporters stenographers. Continue reading “New Cur 16: The Decimation of ACARA’s Elaborations”
Tag: Geometry
New Cur 15: The Vastness of Space
As was our previous post, this one concerns a very small but very telling detail of the new mathematics curriculum. A minor perversion of the curriculum is the renaming of the study of geometry as “Space”. This stupidity was noted by AMSI last year, in their submission on the draft curriculum:
New Cur 12: A Futile Quad Wrangle
This one comes courtesy of commenter jono, who pointed out the absence of quadrilaterals in the f-6 part of the new Curriculum. jono noted that the terms “rhombus” and “kite” and “parallelogram” and Trapezium” are not once mentioned, and that the single mention of “quadrilateral” is in a Year 1 Space elaboration:
New Cur 11: Circling Reason
Just for a change, this post will be about a good aspect of new Curriculum. Just kidding. Sort of.
The following is an elaboration and associated content descriptor from Year 8 Measurement:
solve problems involving the circumference and area of a circle using formulas and appropriate units (AC9M8M03)
deducing that the area of a circle is between 2 radius squares and 4 radius squares, and using 3 × radius2 as a rough estimate for the area of a circle
There are two ways one might react to this elaboration. First, one might justifiably have no idea what is the meaning or intent of the elaboration, and then conclude that the curriculum was written by idiots. Or, one could recognise that the elaboration is at least attempting something good but that the attempt was an abject failure, and then conclude that the curriculum was written by idiots. All roads lead to Rome.
New Cur 9: Less Than Optimal
The following is a selection of elaborations, and parent content descriptors, with a common theme.
The Awfullest Australian Curriculum Space Lines
Yes, it is VCE season, but the ACARA show must go on.
Continuing with our Best Worst Of series, and following on from Number, Algebra and Measurement, here are the awfullest Space lines, chosen from the Complete Works.
Continue reading “The Awfullest Australian Curriculum Space Lines”
The Awfullest Australian Curriculum Measurement Lines
Continuing with our Best Worst Of series, and following on from Number and Algebra, here are the awfullest Measurement lines, chosen from the many, many awful lines on offer.
Continue reading “The Awfullest Australian Curriculum Measurement Lines”
New Cur 2: Not the Volume of a Cone
ACARA is why we can’t have nice things.
Yesterday I decided to be a good guy for a change, and went about writing up Alfred Lodge’s derivation of the volume of a cone. While doing so, however, I thought to take a quick peek at how cones are covered in the new mathematics F-10 curriculum. Big mistake.
The Volume of a Cone
A few days ago, we pulled on a historical thread and wound up browsing the early volumes of The Mathematical Gazette. Doing so, we stumbled across a “mathematical note” from 1896 by Alfred Lodge, the first president of the Mathematical Association. Lodge’s note provides a simple derivation for the volume of a cone. Such arguments don’t vary all that much but, however we missed it, we’d never seen the derivation in the very elegant form presented by Lodge. Here is Lodge’s argument, slightly reworded.
PoSWW 26: Elevated Concern
Yeah, it’s been a while. We’ve been busy. But, hopefully we’re now back with normal transmission, and we’ll start with an easy one, courtesy of Mysterious Michael. It is an exercise and solution from Cambridge Essentials Year 10/10A.