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...

This week in math we learned all about fractions, or more specifically how we can teach fractions.  We started off by having some of our classmates present some learning activities about fractions to provide us with some interactive ways that we can teach it to students.  My group did an activity that involved rolling dice to get fractions and then using operations to create equations that would end with particular results.  We then also attempted a fractions problem using manipulatives to visualize the splitting of fractions. At the beginning I was slightly hesitant about this session because fractions was one of the strands that I found very challenging while in school.  I know now of course after three weeks of this class that it may in fact have had a lot to do with the teaching style of my teacher and not so much my ability to understand the concepts of fractions. Almost all of the theories behind teaching various math strands so far have been ones that I wi...

This week we focused on the variety of algorithms that are useful for teaching students to solve whole number operations.  This ties in very well with what we learned last week about problem solving methods, specifically about how different methods will help different students to solve the same problem.  I hope that by implementing a wide variety of these algorithms, I can minimize the number of students who struggle to complete any math problems they are given. I came into this week feeling very comfortable with my knowledge of this area as I had always done very well in school with my preconceived strategies for solving these types of problems.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover how many additional strategies there were that had never been taught to me as a child.  Although I personally solved these problems with only the techniques I had previously learned, there were certainly some in my classes who could've benefited from the alternatives that we learned...

This week a lot of the online material I was reading talked about the importance of understanding mathematical concepts, not just knowing how to use the formulas etc. and portraying that to students, particularly related to problem solving. One particular example I found interesting was a video done by Dr. Deborah Loewenberg Ball from LearnTeachLead. During the video, they go through a simple math problem and how it can be approached as a teacher. In connection to this line of thinking was an example problem we did in class focused on problem solving.  In this question a woman is selling and buying a horse multiple times and we were tasked with determining whether or not she made a profit on the sales.  When coming up with solutions, my colleagues were able to come up with several different solutions including ones different from how I had solved the question.  It stressed the importance of recognizing the different thought processes that would exist within your clas...

Hi everyone, welcome to my math blog! I am a junior/intermediate (J/I) Brock teacher candidate and on here I'll be sharing my thoughts and reflections as I learn how to teach grade 4-10 math. Up until around grade 9 I was decent at math but since then I haven't had the best relationship with it. I'm a little nervous to teach but hopefully I'll be ready when the time comes. This is where I will be posting my weekly reflections on my journey into teaching math so stay tuned for more!