Greatest Learning

"What was your greatest 'learning' this semester with regard to teaching children mathematics? How has your thinking shifted?"

      My greatest learning this semester with regards to teaching children mathematics was that mathematics is not just simple right or wrong  answers anymore. I learned that teaching mathematics is about getting the students to learn and be able to problem solve using what they know and also by making mistakes they learn. I really believe that students should defiantly get the chance to learn from their mistakes because students can understand more of where they went wrong in an answer by going through it with a teacher instead of just being told they are wrong all together and given the right answer, I find that the student will never learn from that.
I also learned fro this semester about teaching mathematics was that there are so many great resources out there for teachers to use to help students who struggle with math, and I feel that teachers can easily make learning math fun for students instead of being so boring by just reading from a text book. I have learned from doing our math fair and peer teaching that if an activity can be fun and informative students will most likely enjoy the activity and learn a lot more from then just being told what to do from a book.

      My thinking has shifted a lot this semester as it deals with teaching children mathematics by the fact that I have always had a mental block when it came to math, I was never good at it and my teachers were not very helpful. But after this course our instructor has shown us that math can be fun to learn and also that it is a life long process that can be taught no matter how old you are.

This course has made me change my mind drastically as it pertains to mathmatics and how to teach it. At first I was afraid to go out and teach math but after this semester in this course I am actually looking forward to the things I have learned throuoght this course.

Math curriculum k-6

           After today's class activity in which went through the different math resources that are available to teachers for grades kindergarten to grade 6. I learned a few things on how math is taught throughout the k-6 schools systems.

The one thing that really surprised me the most was the big jump in math from kindergarten to grade 1. I found that for kindergarten the curriculum was rather easy and fun, in which the students learned about shapes numbers, and patterns. The books were fun and easy for teachers to use for their students. Then when I looked at the curriculum for grade 1 math, i noticed that there seemed to be a huge jump from how the books were written and presented in grade 1 from kindergarten. In the grade 1 books I noticed that the problems seemed a lot more complicated then they were in the kindergarten books, also  the books seemed a lot more difficult then i thought they were in grade 1, by which i mean they seemed a little more advanced then i thought they should be for grade 1.

Another thing which surprised me was the way that the work books and resources were designed with colorful pictures and drawings but then as soon as we looked at the grade 3 resources they were all black and white and boring. This surprised me because i would have thought that since math is such a difficult subject for some students, that if they made the work books for exciting for students they may have a better understanding of the subject, rather than being board just looking at black and white papers.

The last thing that surprised me was when i was looking at the grade 6 workbook I noticed there was a little section on patterns, and I found that a little poetic because in kindergarten they learn about patterns and now in grade 6 they are looking at patterns again, this to me felt like the students were going full circles in their math learning cycle.

In our text book we looked at problem solving, and 10 steps in which as teachers we should prepare our class for problem solving, and after looking at the different curriculum's and resources for math today, I feel that we could apply these steps to the different curriculum's and be ready to teach our students the different problems they will have to solve in math.

YOUCUBED

Youcubed is a new website that is designed to help students and teachers with math problems.
This site is made for students, educators and anyone else is the k-12 education system. It is a non-profit organization which offers free or very inexpensive resources to teachers and great help for students who are struggling in math. This is a link to the video that fully explains what Youcubed is http://vimeo.com/76722104.


This is just one of a few videos on this site that really helps students learn math, this particular video gives people examples of what a student thinks math is http://vimeo.com/76724911. In the video there is a student who says that math is not just numbers, sometimes it is letters, I think that is a great message especially after our discussion in class last week on what math is. this site i believe would definitely be a resource I would use in my classroom because it would give me some great ideas as to how to teach math, and also give me some answers that i can give to parents as to why I am teaching math this way. Another reason why I would use this as a math resource is because there is a section on the website which is full of math games which can be used as a tool for teaching the students about math, and also for them to have fun while learning about math.

I wish that there was a website like this one when I was in school because I have always struggled in math and I think that a site like this would have really helped me and my parents while they tried to help me with my math.

 I feel that students today have it a lot easier to learn math with the help of websites like Youcubed and I really hope that when this site is up and running in a few months that many teachers and students will take advantage of this amazing opportunity and use this resource in their classrooms, I know I will.
Also I do like the little lame pun in the websites name.

Here is a link to the website http://youcubed.org/

What is Math.

So when we were asked the question what is math?. I thought that it was an easy question with a simple answer which would be math is just a subject that dealt with numbers.

I was wrong. After asking some people, and doing a little research i have found that math is just not about dealing with numbers, it is dealing with a lot more then just numbers. Math is ongoing, it is problem solving, it is ancient, it is a science, it is not gender specific, it is multicultural. Today during our class discussion i learned that in some math there is no right or wrong answer.

After our class discussion on what is math?, i found this short YouTube clip that i think can apply to our question, here is the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rte4Lslg9BM

Also i found that the wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathmatics, a very useful page, even though it is long this web page i think can give you a good feel for what math is.

So i guess after doing some research and discussing the topic of what math is?, i guess there is no definite answer to that question.

Math Biography

Mathematics in my k-6 school was not a very aesthetic one. in my school we had a very basic look at math, my teachers just read from their books and had us to problems in our books or on the board. we did not have any fun or fancy math tools such as some of the manipulative's they have in the classroom today.
My best memory I have in my mathematics from k-6 was that there was a girl in my class who was really great in math and would always brag about getting great marks on her math assignments and tests but this one time i actually did better then her, and i was so proud that i did well and could show her up. my worst memory about math from k-6 was that i went to a school where the teachers would pass everyone just so they wouldn't have to deal with the students next year, and i remember struggling in math in grade 6 and the teacher did not care at all, and passed me anyway even though i believe i did not deserve the marks i was getting.

I was "not good" at math for most of my academic career

Do Schools Kill Creativity

One of the things that stood out to me in this video was at the very beginning when the speaker said that everyone has an interest in education, to me this says that the whole world is interested in education no matter what or who they are.
 Another thing that stood out to me and i found very surprising and interesting was when he said that if you are not prepared to be wrong then you will never come up with anything original. I thing that is such a profound statement because it is true, if we were always right then there will be nothing new or discovered because if we are always right there has to be a right answer which means that someone has already came up with an answer for you. Whereas if you are wrong and do a little research then you could have come up with a brand new discovery.

I think that you showed us this video in class because  it shows us that education is just not about right or wrong but that education is creative, so we shouldn't be so obsessed with right or wrong answers, but to see how creative our future students can be.

Welcome Blog

Hey folks welcome to my first ever blog. These blogs will have to do with our education 3940 course dealing with math in the primary and elementary grades.
 
   The purpose of these blogs is to inform the readers of what we are doing in this course and to help us learn a little bit more on how math works in the primary and elementary grades.