Practice Of Integrating Mathematics History Into High School Mathematics Teaching

Many mathematicians abroad introduced the history of mathematics into mathematics teaching long time ago. It was belie ved that the history could make the subject more appealing. Therefore, they established the International Study Group on the Relation between History and Pedagogy of Mathematics, which symbolizes that the relationship between the history of mathematics and mathematical teaching has been included in the professional academic research field. In China, many mathematicians also come to realize the problem and advocate the introduction. With the exploration of the mathematicians at home and abroad, introducing mathematics history into mathematics is an irreversible trend.Mathematics is an abstract course, and the high school mathematics, in particular, is difficult. Therefore, each class contains plenty of teaching contents. Many students fail to understand and digest them in time, let alone to apply them flexibly. If the teachers stick to inputting and forcing students to do exercises mechanically, the students tend to get bored. Its reason lies in their limited knowledge on the mathematics subject. They even have no idea of why to learn mathematics. The introduction of mathematics history is sure to get rid of their confusion. Dating back to the ancient times, mathematics has been everywhere in our daily life and resolved varieties of practical problems. In addition, many stories about mathematicians and the drawing of theorems and conclusions can undoubtedly arouse students’ interest in learning mathematics. Their inspirational functions contribute to the students’ personal growth, better approaches to problems, multi-angle thinking, mathematical capacity and study spirits. Various ways can be adopted to make use of mathematics history. For example, classroom teaching can be divided into regular class and extensive research class. Besides, various kinds of activity class and online class are also welcome. According to a survey among the students, a majority of students are keen on the teachers’ introduction of mathematics history into class so as to enhance their interest in mathematics. Thus I cho ose one of the two classes I teach and include mathematics history in class. Compared with those in the class without introducing mathematics history, the students in the other class are superior in learning interest and study spirits. They enjoy more active class atmosphere and have better academic results at the end of the term. In the extensive research class, many students who have interest in mathematics choose the course of mathematics history. Under the teachers’ guidance in class, students apply theorems to explore the mathematics problems. In this way they have better understanding of mathematics and their ability in exploration is improved. In the Mathematics Week, the students take an active part in all sorts of activities. In online teaching, the students have a comprehensive understanding of a problem with the online platform, laying a solid foundation for their further study. Whatever the way is, it plays an important role in improving students’ mathematical ability, enabling them to have better approaches to looking at the problems and achieving breakthrough in study.As a teacher, introducing the history of mathematics into practical mathematics teaching is a challenge to traditional teaching. Teachers themselves are supposed to improve their mathematical ability and learn the history of mathematics comprehensively. With regards to it, teachers’ preparing lessons will be more demanding. Specific attention should be paid to the organization of class activities and the choice of the subjects in online teaching. However, it is hardly impossible for an individual to carry out all of them. For this reason, it is a must to depend on the collective power of the lesson preparation group and the teaching and research group as a whole. Our school, an experimental model high school, is devoted to developing different kinds of school textbooks. All the teachers in mathematics group are eager to put forward and share their ideas and put their own strength to the full. It is my sincere hope that we can study and draw some conclusions about introducing the history of mathematics into high school class.