Blog Post 3: EDBE 8P29 (September 30th, 2016)

Good Day Bloggers!

Personal/Class Objectives: 

For this week, it is my objective for this blog post to present my responses to questions, ideas and information presented this week in the course EDBE 8P29 at Brock University!

This week in class, we were reconnecting with number sense and operation. The first order of operations (yes that was a pun) was to connect ideas for whole number operations; resources for mathematical processes meaning and procedural fluency for whole number operations.

                                                         Number Sense

Class Assessment: 

In class, our first task was to come up with simple mathematical equations that equated to the number 1-20 by using four numbers and whatever mathematical equations we could come up with. Using as many formulas we could think of, we were tasked to come up with 20 different means of concluding with numbers 1-20. One of the basic examples was 5+5+5+5 for 20.

Our second task was to solve five questions as a class, presented to us on the projector. These questions were given with a twist (for example how do you divide zero by six), where the answer cannot be calculated, as you cannot divide zero things into six groups). The purpose of these questions (I believe) were to show us that even as teacher candidates we may not even be aware of the simplest number sense questions, and to get us thinking about educating number sense into our own classrooms. We were first addressed these questions in groups, then asked to solve these questions in pairs.

Presentations: 

The third tasking was given to the presenters of the week to present their ten minute presentations to the class about various portions of the Grades 1-8 Ontario Math Curriculum. The three chosen presenters were very informative about the use of number sense and operation, providing many examples to illustrate how to teach this portion of the math curriculum to students at the elementary level.

Review and Reflection: 

Reviewing the contents of the lesson this week structures my professional ongoing self-reflection by providing me with ideas to generate into my own classroom setting when I myself am a teacher. This lesson provides an example of structure that could be beneficial in my future classroom; it has an enticing first task to keep students 'bought in' to number sense and operation lessons, a stimulant second task to unite the classroom by exploring various number sense questions, as well as a third task to provide the students with the ability to reflect and teach their peers about the topic.