Math!

Hard to believe it but it's already been 12 weeks since I began this course, so its time to reflect on everything I've learned over the last few months.  When I first began this course, the last time I had done any form of math was 5 years ago in my first year of university when I managed to scrape together a 70 and never took another math course after.  Naturally, coming into this course I was anxious to be teaching math in any form as I did not have the best relationship with it and I was worried about a situation resulting in me being unable to help students because I did not understand the material I was supposed to be teaching. As I came to find out, I had very little to be concerned about in this area of teaching, as a component of the course involved me regaining my math confidence using practice.  This was present in the form of both the creation of my 3-part lesson plan, and leading a portion of the class during my learning activity presentation through a sa...

          To begin this week, we had our final math strand presentations, specifically about fractions, decimals and percent.  My classmate used fractions for his presentation and showcased a very useful online tool from "abcya.com" that we could use in our teaching blocks.  This tool allowed us to place digital fraction strips together, ranging up to tenths.  In this activity we used it to compare fractions to determine which fractions were greater, and provide a visual reference when adding fractions.  I had never heard of this site before, but I definitely intend to use it during my teaching block as it provides a more engaging alternative to paper fractions strips despite being very similar activities.           Following our presentations, we turned our attention towards assessment in math, with particular reference to the importance of the for/as/of learning model.  A couple points that I found particula...

          This week the focus was on probability and data management and I finally got the chance to do my own lesson activity for my classmates.  My lesson was focused on probability and specifically talked about being able to predict frequency based on theoretical probabilities and create physical representations of probabilities.  I provided my group with several spinners, each with a different probability of landing on a winning section.  Based on the theoretical probabilities I asked my group to predict how often they would win out of 10, 20 etc. spins and then spin the spinners to test how close they were.  After discussing the process of determining outcome frequency, I gave each of them a different winning probability, of which they had to create their own spinner that would match this probability.  They then gave their spinner to a partner to test how close the outcome came to the theoretical probability.  This experience w...

Our topic this week was teaching the strand of measurement.  A classmate of mine ran an activity with me around the skill of estimation and comparing measurements.  He had us line up according to our height, and then provided us with a standard plastic water bottle and challenged us to estimate how many water bottles tall each of us was.  Our method was the person in our group who was the tallest estimated his own height first, and then each person afterwards estimated based on the approximate difference between them and the next tallest person to determine their guess.  We took two very different approaches to determining our actual heights, some of us measured our height and the water bottle height and divided them to get a ratio, while others held the bottle to them and moved it up their body to approximate their height. This strand was of interest to me as it is the strand that my associate teacher has told me I will be teaching during my first teaching block o...

This week our focus was on geometry and 3-D shapes.  The class started off with one of my classmates presenting an activity involving marshmallows and toothpicks.  She began by having us name common examples of the shapes she was trying to teach us about (cone, cylinder etc.).  Once we were familiar with the structure of these shapes, we were tasked with using the toothpicks and marshmallows to create a shape of our choice.  Being able to physically see a representation of the shapes we had just learned about would work very effectively for students being able to visually represent images that had previously only been seen in 2-D contexts. After building the shapes, my classmate took the opportunity to teach us about faces, edges, and vertices.  With our shapes built, it became very easy to use each toothpick and marshmallow to represent and edge and vertex respectively.  As mentioned before it would allow students to easily translate 2-D drawings and pic...

This week we examined the ways to teach pattering and algebra to our students.  A unit that I personally excelled in during my times in elementary school.  As such, I never had a personal connection to any sorts of modified teaching methods that I was exposed to during this unit in school.  Of course, the one piece I did always remember was the excitement that came out of me when the teacher would bring out the polygon tiles. In class, we used these tiles to show how t present an interactive way for students to develop patterning skills.  Importantly, it also allowed students to better understand how patterns involving more than one element could look/be formed.  The use of number machines also came up in class as a way of helping to students to physically "see" a number transform.  I found this method very helpful as it can help organize student's thoughts around the possible functions being performed.  This works especially well if multiple functio...