Weekly Reflection 2

Hey everyone! Welcome back to my math blog. Today I'm going to be updating you on some material covered in class, and how I will be utilizing elements in my classroom. 

These past few weeks have been really helpful seeing my colleagues present their math lessons to the class – I’ve grasped a good idea from what is expected from those who have done well, to what I would need to improve upon for those who missed vital criteria from the rubric. I think most activities focused on helping students to visually see the representation between numbers; as I am a visual learner myself, I feel like I will address difficult areas of math (such as fractions and decimals) to my students firstly through visually understanding them as numbers, in comparison to their whole. In math class, I was always a student who wanted to know “Why?” and found it frustrating when I was understanding a concept merely as just a formula, unconnected and isolated from its content. Having students first understand and see fractions compared to their whole numbers, I will then help them to make relationships between the two, as a way to connect and give fractions meaning.

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 Personally, I really enjoyed my colleague Kyle’s presentation – he was organized, his activity sheet was clear and concise, and his activity would have helped me (if I were a grade 4 student) understand relationships between fractions and decimals in a fun way. Combining elements of game and challenge (memorizing where each card was) as a way to introduce fractions and decimals was very smart and would be an engaging activity I would use in my class. Many students are visual and kinaesthetic learners, so after explaining the rules and the objectives for those auditory learners, I would then let students have freedom to explore fractions and decimals, in a more tactile approach. For Kyle's game (pictured here) we got into groups and played concentration, while attempting to match the decimal representation of a number with its matching fraction representation. He supplied us with an answer sheet, base-ten blocks, as well as an opportunity to make our own cards! If I were a grade 4 student, this would have been a fun, challenging game that would help to memorize basic fractions and their decimals. 

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          Another activity I enjoyed was Colin’s presentation – he was very comfortable talking to the class and was very easy to understand. While I had already learned his ‘9 times-table trick,’ I would still have been able to clearly follow along had I no prior experience. This is a very useful tool to teach children, as the 9 times-table is very difficult to comprehend. His use of both manipulatives, as well as the physical hand, applied to various aspects of learning.

This is an image of the manipulatives that Colin created – while you had the option to use your hand, these hands were numbered to help make visualizing the problem easier!

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           Another helpful resource I will use in my future classroom is from the textbook Making Math Meaningful– while all the principles are very helpful, I find the ‘Misconceptions’ area in each chapter very beneficial to my learning. In this part of the chapter, the author lays out many of the misconceptions and common mistakes students learning about the given strand will make, or be inclined to make. Familiarizing myself with these misconceptions when I am teaching math, may help me to alter my lessons to be more clear, hone in on these specific areas in order to avoid these mistakes altogether, or be more patient when students are struggling to understand certain areas.

This image was taken out of the Making Math Meaningful text, and highlights many students' misconceptions regarding decimals.

This image was taken from the Making Math Meaningful text and explores some common errors students have when learning fractions.

       

          Anyways, thanks for reading! I will be back with more updates from my math course in the upcoming weeks.

– Madeleine 

References:

Small, M. (2016) 3^rd  Edition. Making Math Meaningful to Canadian Students, K-8.3rd Edition, Toronto, Nelson.   

Catharine (2016). Confused student child. Miscw. Retrieved from https://www.miscw.com/confused-student-child-6297.html