Good Day Bloggers!
Objective:
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 8P54 at Brock University! For our third week, our class focused on math problems in the shape of mental math, communicated to one another about our reasoning whether or not to implement this activity into our own classrooms, and made our own classroom games in partners. In our forum posts (in addition to the first week of Webinars!), we looked into the concept of mistakes, and how making them is beneficial to overall learning. I thought that this week was engaging in that the classroom was led often by the teacher candidates, and allowed for interaction with our peers in regards to mathematical concepts and presentation.Fluency in Mental Math = Attainable!
Our first activity was a real eye-opener! I would have assumed as a class we would be prepared for mental mathematics, but I quickly realized that the mathematic language of many questions led teacher candidates to a confused state. The activity provided by our professor was quite a simple concept. Every teacher candidate was provided with one question containing a number and a simple word problem. Ex: My number is 10, twice my value plus 2 equals what? With problems such as these, another teacher candidate would have the answer to the first question, and so on until everyone had a turn answering one question. As we saw as a class, this exercise allowed us to practice our mental math, as well as refresh our mathematics literacy. I thought this to be an interesting exercise, but if I were to use this sort of refresher, I would contain it to grades 7 and 8 mathematics, and use it a day before a test for students to draw on their mathematical language skills and interpret what the question is asking of them with increased accuracy.
We also drew on this concept of mental math through our games we created in partners. My partner and I created a game with the doors of the lockers, adding a similar component to the one shown to us but with a few certain twists. The concept created was meant for a break in the middle of a particularly long lesson, allowing students to have an energizer while simultaneously still studying mathematics. In our activity, we gave each student a post-it, where students had a mathematical equation equaling a certain locker in the hallway. Once each student received the post-it, they were to speed walk to the locker number that equaled their equation. We thought this game to be engaging and stimulating to the concept of mental math; it allows students to get out of their seats and work with one another (as there were groups of 3 going to the same locker). We thought that students of a younger age could benefit from this too should the educator implement a classroom environment that supports safety during this exercise (no running, pushing, etc).
Mistakes? Do You Mean Opportunities For Learning?
Final Thoughts :
In this week of mathematics study, I have learned that we must consistently utilize repetition in our classrooms when we are teaching any concept. Mental math in problem solving allows for students to gain an approximate value of what they are problem-solving, and thus it is a very important concept. In addition, through mistakes in their values, students are increasing their knowledge, and learning how to come up with an answer, perhaps with even more efficiency. We can connect this to last weeks' concept in regards to growth mindset. Mistakes allow for a growth mindset, when the learner realizes that they are welcome to make mistakes and knows that this is an opportunity for growth.Thats all for now Fellow Bloggers! Until next week :)
Hey Jacob!
ReplyDeletethis is my first time seeing your blog and I must say, I am really impressed! I like the fact that in the post you have sub-titles that make things easy to navigate and This week in particular I enjoyed the video you shared! I even saw the other videos by the same professor when he discussed his 5 strategies. Keep up the good work.
Hi Jacob!
ReplyDeleteI really like how you thoughtfully created a math game/activity that had a movement break component. We have learned that physical activity is important for students and that it can benefit student learning overall. This was a great game that I would adapt to include as a movement activity in a classroom of my own.
When playing the minds-on game at the beginning of the class, I too thought that my classmates would easily compute the mental mathematics. Many struggled and I saw that as a valuable learning experience. I asked myself if I had a student struggling playing a classroom game such as the one the professor presented us with, how would I ensure that the student is accommodated to participate equally?
I agree that repetition is important, however, I would take this one step further and mention that the repetition should be meaningful and engaging. Repeating the same activities can be borrowing and cause a lack of motivation in students. This is where math games are excellent in increasing student motivation and enhancing learning.
I really like your blog Jacob! this is the first time I've looked through it.
ReplyDeleteI love that you summarized your thoughts on this week, and love the layout of your post.
I also super agree that repetition when teaching is key!