It has all come to an end. This will be my final post from my math class of year 2. It has been an amazing experience and I feel that my mindset has grown a lot over the last 6 weeks. I am really happy with the work that has been done in my time in the class. I really enjoyed using online tools to create lessons and broaden my background in mathematics. I am also thankful that we had the opportunity to create a math unit plan that I can use in my class and when I am in my placement. It is often hard to come up with different ideas and differentiate instruction but with the help of my peers we were able to create an amazing unit plan that I would be happy to use and show to my other colleagues.
I think the biggest improvement in my development as a math teacher would be the ability to incorporate technology and manipulative's into the class. Experiencing all of the webinars really provided great insight into the world of teaching with technologies. Often traditional math excludes the idea of resources outside of just pen, paper and calculator. As an educator I want to avoid that mindset and adopt the various technologies and games that we learned about throughout the course into my classroom. I also enjoyed the different manipulative's that were discussed in that class. The use of manipulative's inspired my lesson on multiplying single digit numbers by multi-digit numbers. I really wanted to do a lesson that used both physical objects and visual representations to teach a more difficult topic in grade 4 math.
The link to my lesson is below.
Math Lesson- Multiplying single digit numbers by multi-digit numbers
Finally, I think that i am ready to tackle my final placements as my second year of teachers college comes to an end.
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Sunday, October 22, 2017
Week 5 - Focusing on Visual Representations
We are now in the final stretch of our math class and have come across visual representations and creating a visual of our problems. Now this for me is a big struggle. I am a poor artist for one, and secondly I never wanted to spend the time drawing out my problems unless I was asked too or its was during Physics class. In Physics class, I suddenly became an artist. It was weird. Why I did not enjoy visual representation was mostly because of the instance where I spent too much time on one question trying to draw it out for bonus marks and I could not finish my test. Well, that never happened again. I could not be bothered to draw out a problem again. Until now. I've realized that it is very important depending on our learners. Not everyone is like myself, rushing through exams, finding the short-cuts and eliminating all the extra work. I know now that some individuals need that extra work sometimes just to help them understand the problem. It can be something as simple as a stick picture or some base ten blocks that can help someone take a step in the right direction. So as a teacher my attitudes have changed from when I was the student.
The manipulative I had the pleasure of using were some that I had never seen before and at this point I am not too sure if I would use them again. They were similar to base ten blocks and provided the same visual representation as them but did not have any value to them. When you think of base ten blocks you think of the single 1, the 10 stick and the 100 square. these had no values assigned to them so it was a bit confusing and I ended up using them wrong to solve my problem. I did however find a different way of using them which I found pretty interesting.
Finally I looked at the online module that was provided about visual representations and I found out that many common methods can often be recreated to be a visual representation. The example is the FOIL method. A student created a visual representation similar to area, that broke down the parts of the equation, which I thought was really interesting. It can be seen below.
The manipulative I had the pleasure of using were some that I had never seen before and at this point I am not too sure if I would use them again. They were similar to base ten blocks and provided the same visual representation as them but did not have any value to them. When you think of base ten blocks you think of the single 1, the 10 stick and the 100 square. these had no values assigned to them so it was a bit confusing and I ended up using them wrong to solve my problem. I did however find a different way of using them which I found pretty interesting.
Finally I looked at the online module that was provided about visual representations and I found out that many common methods can often be recreated to be a visual representation. The example is the FOIL method. A student created a visual representation similar to area, that broke down the parts of the equation, which I thought was really interesting. It can be seen below.
Really cool week in math class, see you next week.
Sunday, October 1, 2017
Week 4-Strategies and Webinar
This week the in class and online portions of our math classes focused on the different strategies we can show our students and the different that our students may come up with. As a teacher I find being open to the idea of different strategies other than your own personal ideas extremely detrimental to a students learning. Creating a learning environment that is flexible and allows for differentiation is one way to increase a child's learning. Another would be to ask the right questions. Questions that have a wide base and high ceiling, that basically allow anyone to answer them are important. Backwards design can also be used. Start with the answer. Have your students figure out as many ways to get that answer. Do not put any limitations on their learning. The example we used in class was the number 13.
How can we make 13? Well, there are hundreds of ways to make the number 13. We can be simple and choose the equation 7 + 6 = 13. We can also be complex and say 2^3 + √25 = 13. We can then make rules, like you have to use at least six different numbers so you can have 7 + 6 +5 +8 + 3 + 10 = 13. Then our learners can be as creative as possible, fostering the creative process.
This week was also my week to present a webinar. I really enjoyed my experience with the webinar. At first, I did not know what to expect, I had never participated in or created a webinar, so I was nervous. Presentations aren’t really my thing. We (Brittany and I) prepared very well for the webinar, creating a very user-friendly webinar with multiple resources and plenty of time to prepare for participation. When presenting our webinar things ran fairly smooth, with no technological interruptions. We had the topic of incorporating technology and games into financial literacy in the classroom. We chose to present games that had clear negative and positive attributes to create discussion, not to present the perfect game. Brittany and I wanted our participants to explain and discuss what a good technological tool is, and how they would use it in their classroom, which was our goal from the beginning; hopefully our colleagues now better understand the importance technology and financial literacy in the classroom. A big thanks to our participants for coming out and being a great audience.
How can we make 13? Well, there are hundreds of ways to make the number 13. We can be simple and choose the equation 7 + 6 = 13. We can also be complex and say 2^3 + √25 = 13. We can then make rules, like you have to use at least six different numbers so you can have 7 + 6 +5 +8 + 3 + 10 = 13. Then our learners can be as creative as possible, fostering the creative process.
This week was also my week to present a webinar. I really enjoyed my experience with the webinar. At first, I did not know what to expect, I had never participated in or created a webinar, so I was nervous. Presentations aren’t really my thing. We (Brittany and I) prepared very well for the webinar, creating a very user-friendly webinar with multiple resources and plenty of time to prepare for participation. When presenting our webinar things ran fairly smooth, with no technological interruptions. We had the topic of incorporating technology and games into financial literacy in the classroom. We chose to present games that had clear negative and positive attributes to create discussion, not to present the perfect game. Brittany and I wanted our participants to explain and discuss what a good technological tool is, and how they would use it in their classroom, which was our goal from the beginning; hopefully our colleagues now better understand the importance technology and financial literacy in the classroom. A big thanks to our participants for coming out and being a great audience.
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