FACTORS

Week 2

This week in class, we are setting the stage for some high quality work! We not only started getting ideas for our unit plans but learned how to start a webinar! Be sure to check in later on in the month for that...it will be very informative!

By Ash Artistry

On the other hand, this weeks class brought forth some memorable points that I would love to share with you all. I have to say before this class, I did not connect math with card tricks, but after our professor, Mina showed us yet another trick, I knew I wanted to include those in my repertoire. The card trick taught us the important lesson of the multiples of 9. Having gone through the experience, I am sure to keep that in my memory!

We later learned the importance of making sense of math problems. This is a point that I would like to stress as it never actually crossed my mind. Yet, some students maybe approaching a math problem without even understanding what it is that they are doing regarding the application. Educators need to be aware of this and teach students the difference between knowing/doing vs. understanding math meaning. While reading, Paying Attention to Mathematics Education K-12, on pg. 4, they mention "All educators – classroom teachers, early childhood educators, school principals and other instructional leaders in the education system – use a variety of critical thinking and problem-solving strategies to engage all students in making connections between content and process as they work toward a thorough understanding of mathematics." Students knowledge will shift from being procedural to conceptual knowledge (which we all know, gets imprinted in our memory).

With that being said, there is something important to get clear, and that is math can be creative. There are many different ways that people can view math and arrive at an answer. Everyone has their own take and conceptualizes/views a math problem differently, this was brought to our attention in class during a video.

As someone with an art background, I can relate to this experience and apply it to math, seeing the beauty in it. Before having this brought to my attention, I did not think that there were multiple ways to arrive at the same answer. The mathematician needs to be creative in seeing that there are other solutions other than the usual route. Which I found to be so captivating and made me have a better appreciation towards mathematics. 

My last point is a teaching activity that I think you will find very useful when teaching math. It is.... jeopardy! I had such a fun time playing this in class as it turned learning into gamification. It did not feel like we were just solving math problems. As a teaching strategy, you can use this as either a form of diagnostic to see where the children are at, a mid-term review or even as a pre-test review. 

I hope you enjoyed today's post and plan on implementing some of the activities and strategies mentioned. 

Enjoy!