Week #1
Welcome all educators to my math blog!
I have just begun my second-year mathematics class at Brock University wit Pat McEarchren. So far from the moment we entered the class, I knew it was going to be a good one! She brought cookies to class! What a way to make people love math.
Anyways, Pat in the first class was able to go through an ice breaker activity (I know, your thinking…. OMG I hate icebreakers) but, this was like no other. Pat gave us all a sheet where we had to go around the room and find someone who did what was mentioned in each section. Some things were; speaks another language, goes to Starbucks regularly, has kids, etc… this was an activity that I will take with me to my future classrooms, especially if I am fortunate enough to teach high school. It was different from regular icebreakers, got the students up and moving around, and allowed them to learn things about one another that they probably didn’t already know.
Moving on to Math… When we moved into working on math, we talked about how all of us perceived math, and how we all felt about the subject. This allowed Pat to see where we all were in our confidence in the subject of mathematics, working similarly to a diagnostic. Moreover, within the second class, we were doing more hands-on math, and we were all asked to divide our tables into two groups, where each group thought of a different approach to solving the problem she had put on the smartboard. May I add, the problem she added for our class was one on cats, in the first class she learned something about one of her students, and connected further to this student, by adding cats into the mathematics problem. Overall, making math something that that student will want to participate and be engaged in. This is one of the many ideas to enhance engagement in a mathematics classroom mentioned by Nanci Smith in the link below.
Once our groups divided and came up with a method to solve the equation, we were then split into groups, where we were able to learn even further ways to solve the problem at hand. Some of these methods are viewed in the images below. Methods included; double number lines, graphing, factoring, and estimation. Through doing this activity, we were able to challenge our brains to think of the problem in different ways, and see that all these approaches, although they may be different in fact all lead to the same answer, that Maria’s store was the best deal to get cat food for the kitten.
(Malatesta, 2020)
(Malatesta, 2020)
(Malatesta, 2020)
(Malatesta, 2020)
I appreciated, as will my students when I am a teacher myself, the fact that they were able to use whatever method they felt best to achieve their answer. As, growing up in school, I would always ask my father to help me with math, yet he did it a different way, and I was only allowed to show my steps using the method given to me by my teachers in class. This was frustrating as a child, as although my father was able to get the right answer with a different method, that I sometimes understood more, I was not able to show my work like that and would have trouble with math. This method would allow students to get past that barrier and solve it in the way they know best, as well as be opened to other ways of challenging their thinking and skills.
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