Activities, Strategies, Principles, & More

So far so good! Math hasn't been too intimidating so far. This week's math class we did a lot of in-class practical work, with three fun activities run by my teacher candidate colleagues. We did a division game that involved dice. We did a visual addition game with the use of manipulatives. And finally we did a mathematical problem that also used manipulatives and was quite tricky. What was awesome was that the class worked together to find the correct answer - collaboration (:

I really enjoyed the class discussions after each activity. The class gave feedback on ways to improve the presenting of the activities to future students. This allowed the presenter to reflect on their teaching and further develop their practice. 

For the remainder of the class we learned about how to ensure students' effectiveness regarding operations and how it depends on counting strategies, ability to combine and partition numbers, and other helpful strategies. We learned about the principles of mathematics such as communicative property, associative property, and the identity rule. Since math isn't an area of strength for myself, I like to try and relate it to real life so I can remind myself of the importance and make it applicable to my daily activities. For instance the weekly task of grocery shopping can provide several examples of word problems or mathematical operations. The curriculum mentions that students' interest will be engaged when they are able to see the connections between the mathematical concepts they are learning and their application in the world around them and in real-life situations. I have included below and example of operational problems one can provide for their students that relate to real life and are thus relatable to our every day life.

We can teach our students about math in grocery stores, math for budgeting a vacation or trip, math when we bake, math when managing time or in sports games, etc. For younger grades, teachers can read-aloud stories related to math and then hold discussions about how the story related to both math and real-life. This all sounds easy to do, but there are many challenges faced when providing students with opportunities to engage in meaningful learning experiences to connect knowledge and skills learned in school to the real world. Students often view math as isolated, acquired, skills and concepts they must learn simply to pass the unit test and move onto the next math strand. That is why it is crucial to include concept lessons to target math concepts in real world situations, project-based learning activities in math, and exploratory lessons to go beyond the traditional textbook teaching strategy. 

Also, as a fan of ted talks, I have included a video on "Five Principles of Extraordinary math Teaching". It got me excited about the prospect of teaching math to my future students!

https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/569423946614867181/?lp=true

What do you guys think about applying mathematics to real life situations? Do you think it would make a difference in the understanding/learning of mathematical operations? 

Talk next week friends (: