The Final Post

Welcome back to my blog! This week, I will be going over everything of value that I have learned over the past 6 weeks in terms of mathematics in the classroom! Hope these help you in your classrooms.

Learning to Solve Problems Various Ways: 

Teaching students how to gain confidence in math is important. One way to do this, is to show students a problem, and divide them into groups, in order to solve the question. When done in class, each group was able to come up with a different 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. 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. 

            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. Furthering students’ confidence in mathematics and providing them with new ways to solve for answers. 

Perception and Spatial Sense:

When doing an owl task in class, as seen below, we learned about perception and spatial sense. This is something I learned in a PD session through my teaching block, as it was something that educators needed more PD on, where students tend to excel. 

(McEarchren, 2020)

When looking at this lesson in class, I solved the question very differently 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. It’s 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. They are able to learn these skills from the use of games such as Minecraft, and other video games that increase perception and spatial sense skills. 

Teaching Rich Task’s:

A rich task is something that all students can attempt to do. For instance, showing the class a problem or task where they have to pick one thing that does not belong. When given the picture seen below, all students have the ability, no matter their grade level to find one thing that does not belong. Instantly, students notice the circle, and may choose that, yet they can also pick writing fonts that are different, font colours (Black Vs. White), the different coloured square (Purple Vs. Blue), etc… this activity allows anyone at any level to find something, and explain why it does not belong. This can easily be added to lessons as an introduction, as taught in class, the minds on activity being a rich task is very important, as it captures the engagement of all your students!

Being in math the past six weeks, has taught me that these aspects of teaching are very important to take into account, along with teaching students with real life experiences. I can’t stress enough how important it is to engage students through the use of real-life exemplars. This allows for students to see more value in learning the lesson at hand. As students often question where and when this will be used in real life, showing them where and how this may be used will further the importance of learning. How to implement this in a classroom is demonstrated through the video below. 

Math in Real Life