Week #2

Welcome back to my math blog!

This week, we learned about perception and Pat explained to us how this can be taught from such a young age. Perception in math is often how you are able to view things such as 3-D objects and shapes pieced together as a whole. This is something that I have gotten better at over time, but surprisingly, the thing that has helped me is my students! Children now a days are often playing with Lego, building things on Minecraft or other video games, and are able to build spatial sense and perception skills that much of my generation does not have. 

This year during my second teaching block I had a PD Day, where we dealt with math. One of the topics of the day dealt with spatial sense. I noticed as soon as most educators were shown the problem they had to solve, most immediately stated “I am not good at this stuff”. Together the teachers in my group worked with all our minds to solve the problem. It seemed that this was something we all had difficulty with as we had to use Lego to create certain towers in a grid that acted much like sudoku. Futhermore, the educators discussed that when they gave similar problems to their students, they were able to solve them instantly, as they were able to visualize how the towers should be created prior to building them. Whereas, with the group of educators at my table, we tried certain towered and moved them around until we solved the problem rather than visualizing first as trial and error was an easier method for us to use. It is demonstrated in the link attached, that this is something the school board I did my placement at, is trying to further engage students in mathematics, through using parents to assist in this as well.

https://stlu.hwcdsb.ca/support/parentresources/?fileID=95725

In class this week we were given a problem very similar to that at the PD Day during my block. Pat showed us this image, and we had to tell her how many owls there were in total. 

(McEarchren, 2020)

This used perception and spatial sense in order to solve the question. Very different from my student’s way of solving, I had to draw out a grid. Then, fill in the spots where I knew there would be a tower, and then continue by drawing each views owl on my grid to piece together how many owls there were in total. Below is an image of how I came to the amount of owl’s I did. Now, if I were to have given this to my students, majority would have been able to tell me the total amount of owls without drawing out a visual, and instead visualizing it in their heads. Its truly amazing, their ability to think the way they do, and they are able to do so as they practice this skill often, without even knowing. 

(Malatesta, 2020)