"Greatest" Learning Experience

I too am amazed that we are once again finished another semester at MUN. Seems like just a few weeks ago, I was thinking to myself that there is no way that I will find the time to get everything finished on time, but we all made it!(and everything is past in!) So for our final blog post, we are required to respond to the following question: 


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


This was actually the question that I wondered the most about for the interview that we were supposed to have but didn't get to because of the crazy NL weather. (I guess that was a learning experience in itself - never depend on any type of schedule in the winter months of NL because last-minute nor'easters can come out of nowhere and put those plans to a halt. But as Mary knew previously, since I show my emotions on my face very easily ;) that I was not too too upset! haha) 

So what have I learned throughout the course and how has my thinking shifted? 
I believe I learned many valuable things through our fun-filled class discussions as well as course assignments. I learned simple things like:
- never put students on any time pressures to complete math problems
- make use of the many manipulative that are available 
- and fractions are so much easier than we all think they are! 

But I would have to say my greatest insight from the term is that mathematics is an ongoing subject and not just one that gets done. I came to the course with the idea of teaching math to students just by tackling through the SCO's that are in the curriculum guides and getting it done that way. However, through the semester I learned that math is a lot more than just the worksheets, rules, and formulas that I experienced while I was in elementary school myself. Math is about allowing students to become greater problem solvers. Therefore by including open-ended problems in your classroom, providing manipulatives for students to use, and different strategies, students learn to acquire creative problem solving skills. So much as changed from the time when I was an elementary student, and I look forward to the challenge of a new approach to mathematical teaching and making math FUN for my future students!

Mary, you have been an amazing professor with the amount of care you show for us and that has been very appreciated. I wish you and your baby all the best. You are about to embark on one of life's most rewarding rollercoasters! 

Math Resources In the Classroom

          On Tuesday, we had the opportunity to go through the resources that are available to the teachers of Kindergarten through grade six in Newfoundland. I have to start by saying that I thought it was an excellent activity to allow us to partake in since it gave me exposure to the resources that I knew existed but had never actually looked through. I did see some textbooks and workbooks while on a few observation days but not in all grades. Therefore it was great to do this in a setting where you get the chance to look through all the resources from K-6 to draw some conclusions and make comparisons. 

What did I find surprising after the whole experience? I noticed things that I was surprised in a good manner and then ways in which I was confused as to why certain things or decisions took place.

I'll start with the good : I absolutely loved all the
resources that are available to teachers of Kindergarten and
Grade 1 teachers. These range from a variety of little colourful books, several lap books, teachers' guides, to workbooks (grade 1). As a pre-service teacher who is very interested in teaching these beginning grades, I look forward to the amount of resources that are available to these particular grades. For the older grades, I did like the variety of strategies that are found within the textbook. I can see through the book how many students with different learning styles can grasp a concept, say multiplication, after being exposed to many approaches to do so. I can remember when I was in elementary school, which was not all that long ago, that there was one (maybe two!) way that was taught by the teacher and if you did not get that way, you struggled. By offering a variety of techniques to the learning of a concept, you are opening the doors to more students understanding the concept, as opposing to memorizing the steps within just one single approach. 

Now a few things I was confused about: I did not understand the transition of coloured books from kindergarten and grade 1 to non-coloured books for students in grade 3. Students who are in grade 3 all of a sudden do not need the colourful images that bring pages to life the way they did in younger grades? I found this a little odd and as we learn about the declining attitudes towards mathematics as children become older, I feel like the workbook also matches this decline. Also, I struggled with the idea of no books relating to math once children got to grade three and onwards. There are many books that discuss math which I feel should be included in all grades for students to avail of. 


  In Chapter 4 in our textbook, it discusses how to plan problem-based lessons by following 10 important steps to consider, where it is important to plan a lesson around your students and their needs to ensure that you are planning for all the learners in your class. Therefore, I feel it is important to treat the textbooks (a part of the available resources) as part of a way to teach a big idea and "not to get them to do pages" as our textbook states. It is important not to have the textbook as your only resource but to incorporate many different types into your teaching of mathematics. I thought this approach was more evident in the kindergarten to grade two resources where there was more variety in material but not the case in grade three resources and upwards. 

YouCubed

            We were introduced to this new site, called YouCubed, which I am fairly certain that in today's classroom, if you were to write this word upon the board and ask children what they thought it was, they would reply that you misspelled the word YouTube. I'm not sure if anyone else noticed this resemblance to the famous site, but I have to admit it was one of the first things that stood out to me.

            Anywho, YouCubed is a "nonprofit providing free and affordable K-12 mathematics resources and professional development for educators and parents". This site recognizes the new movement of teaching math to children in a revolutionary way in which it claims students will thoroughly enjoy and lead to math empowerment. The material that are located throughout the site are made by international researchers and educators all focused on teaching math in a new innovative manner. 

          FYI: Jo Boaler is a Stanford University math specialist who has become a driving force behind math change in the United States and beyond; she is leading the YouCubed project. 

         There has been no doubt a change in the way of teaching mathematics in our schools throughout the province in the past number of years. Even since I have left school, I have had calls from my younger cousins' mothers who are begging me to help with the math homework that my cousins have brought home. Often the topic at my grandmother's weekly Sunday dinner, is how they have changed math to make it much more difficult and back when they went to school, they were taught how to do it and that was it. Obviously they are unaware of the importance of teaching children to be greater thinkers. 

        I am extremely interested in this site and the possibilities that it could bring into the classroom. It will be a great resource or tool to include both in the classroom and for parents once it becomes fully operational. I think it is great that they have the site organized into different grade levels and has a separate page to help support parents (which I think my aunts would benefit from!).

To be able to give students "the path to a better understanding" is what ultimately 

teaching should be all about.  

Here is the link for anyone who wants to check it out: 

http://www.youcubed.org

      

What IS Mathematics anyways?

For this post, we had to think about what math really is? To be honest, I had never really given thought to this question before just because math had always been a part of my school life and I never really wondered how I would define it. I found this wordle image, located to the right, on google relating to the different concepts surrounding the world of math. I thought it related well to my search of what exactly math is, what it means to do mathematics, and what may be happening when one is thinking mathematically. 

After giving much thought to the question, my definition of math goes like this: math is a study of numbers using formulas, different methods, and rules to obtain answers to problems, in turn helping people obtain greater problem solving skills. 

I thought it would be interesting to ask around to different people I knew about what they thought math was or what it meant to think mathematically.I asked a range of individuals who were in their fifties to high school students to primary/elementary students. Here are some of the responses they gave:

• a calculation of numbers
• study of numbers
• math is everything
• math makes the world revolve
• is used to educate people
• using formulae to calculate numbers or to find a value of something
• using numbers to solve problems and also keeping track of number values
• the calculation of numbers by using rules and formula in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division
• a bunch of formulas used to create things
• manipulating numbers in different ways to find new numbers and solve problems. 

It was eye-opening to me how a lot of the responses were very similar to one another, just worded in a different way.  They also voiced their opinion of how important math was in our lives and how difficult it would be to live day to day without using math in any form.

I researched many definition of math on the internet and the one that 

suited me the most was from the website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mathematics.

It defines

mathematics  (ˌmæθəˈmætɪks, ˌmæθˈmæt-)
— n
1.	( functioning as singular ) a group of related sciences, including  algebra, geometry, and calculus,concerned with the study of  number, quantity, shape, and space and their interrelationships  by using aspecialized notation
2.	( functioning as singular or plural ) mathematical operations  and processes involved in the solution of a problem or  study of some scientific field

I look forward to building on my knowledge of what mathematics is and what it means to be thinking mathematically.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

         In Last Thursday's Math Education Class, we watched Sir Ken Robinson's 2006 TED Talk, which I have included above if anyone is interested in viewing the clip. Ken Robinson makes several great points in this short twenty minute talk regarding education. He does the talk in a humorous way by which the joking manner he uses helps bring his points across to people in an extremely effective way. 
        
        He said several things throughout the clip that stuck with me or that was interesting. The first point he made that I had never thought about before was the fact that we are educating students now in the present for a future that we do not even know about or in his words, "a future we have no clue about". Therefore, he thinks that we should treat creativity as important as a component of education as literacy since we have no idea while the future will hold.
       
     A statement he says that resonated with me was "if you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original". He goes on to say that in today's education system, the worst thing someone can do is make a mistake. He believes that all children are born artists, but going through the school system where everyone does not want to be wrong, we grow out of our creative minds. He says that no matter where you go to in the world, the same hierarchy of subjects are seen with math and language arts at the top, and the arts on the bottom. Then within the arts are another order of subjects with more attention given to art and music compared to dance. This hierarchy is used due to the Industrial Revolution where you needed the higher subjects to work or as a way to gain entrance into different universities, since they valued subjects like math but not the arts. 

      
     Another thing that I found to be surprising but true is that no longer does it mean you have a job if you have a degree. Having a degree in today's world is extremely common and no longer guarantees that a job will be there for you. This is extremely relative to our lives as future teachers, where the amount of jobs for teachers in the province are at an all time low. I have met several people throughout my schooling that are driving taxis, working at fast food restaurants, or other places with a degree. Now  in today's world, you have to go on to get a Phd in order to be employable. 

     As future educators, we should try to promote creativity in our classrooms through different activities and different methods of helping students learn. We should not be caught up in right or wrong answers but let the students justify their answers which will lead to students having a greater sense of thinking and having a creative mind. 

  

Math Autobiography

What did Math look like in the younger days of my school career from grades Kindergarten to six? To be honest, I have the worst memory and have poor memories of many things that happened while I was in primary school. However, I do remember in Kindergarten we would often sing songs or a few lines relating to math, either for the correct way to write a number or for counting from one to ten. In grades one and two, I had a teacher that was fabulous and I continue to refer to her as my favourite teacher from my schooling career. She made all subjects fun and interesting, including math, and I can remember that we would bring home math worksheets for homework to complete with our parents. I also can remember the classroom being decorated with lots of numbers and a counting line around the room as a border. I can remember my experiences with math in elementary grades in much greater detail, whereby we spent half the class having a lecture on a specific math concept, then the second half, working on problems in our textbook relating to that concept. 

My worst possible memory surrounding mathematics occurred while I was in elementary school and had the same teacher for two years in a row (grades 5 & 6) who was absolutely horrible.  He had almost reached the end of his teaching career, about to retire, and we could tell no longer enjoyed his occupation. He would come into the classroom in a very grumpy mood every single class, teach us a new topic in less than ten minutes, and then assign questions from the textbook to complete. If we had questions, he would get upset and often scream out unnecessary names to the students. We would then resort to asking questions amongst ourselves and helping one another get through a tough problem. This has affected my views, as an adult, about math by knowing that I will NEVER conduct my math class in this manner and will strive to helping my students learn each day. In the end, this horrible experience turned into a deep learning one for me. 

I feel like I was "good" at math since I done well on the exams and assignments that I completed during school. I never struggled with any of the topics that were taught and often helped my friends who were having problems. My parents also would ask me to help my younger brother with his math homework once I got in elementary and could not only get the answer, but teach him how to do so as well. I think this is how I realized I wanted to become a teacher myself with not only helping my younger brother with his math homework, but along with other subjects as well. 

The role of the math teacher is to provide life long learning lessons relating to mathematics in an engaging manner to all students. My teachers in primary definitely appeared enthusiastic about the teaching of math and I think they feel math was very important to make fun for students to learn. However, in my elementary years, I do feel like they still thought of math an important tool to teach students but did not think that they needed to make it exciting and interesting. The only assessment tools that I can remember being used in elementary grades was tests given at the end of each unit, along with assignments that were both done in class and outside of class throughout each unit. In primary, we completed worksheets and tests didn't begin until grade three, therefore I assume that teachers completed assessment through observation, record keeping, work completed, and portfolios.

Math classes in high school was almost like math class in elementary school (except for content), whereby the teacher spent a great deal of time lecturing about a specific topic while the students took notes for future reference, and then assigned questions. Often, there was not enough time to complete all the questions so there was usually homework in math each school night. There were only tests and assignments given as forms of assessments. I completed advanced math courses up through high school and the calculus course in grade 12. In university, I was advised to take Math 1000 and 1001, in which I did not enjoy. I found the professor extremely hard to understand and a much higher level math skills required. These experiences affected me negatively which by I avoided math courses at university from then on. 

I do engage with math in my daily life whether figuring out the best buys at the grocery store or taking into account time differences when I communicate with my family members in a different time zone. I have to admit that since I have not be directly involved in math, in a course for example, or depend on the calculator on my iPhone too much, my skills of multiplying and adding are slowly becoming weak! However, I do have a 2-year-old daughter who is growing up and I enjoy teaching her to count to ten. (My fiancé says I am not doing a great job since she counts in this order now: 1-2-3-7-8 but I am working on that!)

How do I feel about math now? I enjoy math and being able to solve a problem, but if it gets too messy, I will admit that I do not feel that confident in my skills to continue. I do look forward to teaching my daughter all about mathematics and I especially look forward to teaching my own students one day!

WELCOME!

                         

                          Welcome Everyone!!

This Blog is for the MUN Education course 3940 and will help keep
track of my journey of learning how to teach mathematics to Primary & Elementary Students. Enjoy! :)