Math!

 At this point in time we have reached the half way point in this course and it seems fitting to reflect a bit on my learning since then.  When I compare myself now to during week 1 of this course I have definitely improved in regards to my confidence when approaching multiple math strands.  I feel as though I now have the right mindset and approach towards these strands that make it easier for myself to understand how to teach them, but also how to most effectively have students learn them.  I have also discovered a number of different resources that can be used in the math classroom beyond traditional block manipulatives, as these were the most frequent tool I was given to use during my time in elementary school.  I've found that for most of the strands covered so far, a common approach has been to provide visual representation of the concepts you want to teach.  This was always something I had trouble with before in creating ways that I can take the co...

This week we looked at integers, and how we can effectively teach these concepts to students who until this point may have never even seen a negative number before.  Whenever I think about integers, I'm always brought back to my grade 7 math class, where I had a teacher who in my opinion used very effective ways at helping us understand math.  With integers, my teacher would give us yellow (positive) and red (negative) chips to represent a value of plus or minus one.  When doing an equation we would be told to build a combination of chips equal to the first number of the equation (ie. start with 10 yellow and 4 red chips for 6 in the equation 6 - (-2)), then remove or add yellow/red chips according to the next part of the equation (ie. take away two red chips to signify removing two negatives).  Each remaining yellow and red would cancel each other out until only one colour was left, giving us the solution to the equation (final result is 10 yellow, 2 red, red...