Miss M's Learning Space

This week we explored several strategies outlined in our textbook Making Math Meaningful (Small, 2012), including strategies on prime factorization, mental math, estimation, and place value. I talked more about prime factorization last week, and this week I'm going to explore mental math strategies.  I’ve never really thought about how to teach concepts such as mental math strategies, since by this time in my life they come quickly, but Keenan, Casey (2014, August 23). Screen-grab from Number Talks Strategies [Online Video]. Retrieved from:  http://bit.ly/1MQnDFV now that I’ve been introduced to the strategies it makes a lot more sense. It’s interesting to see all the different mental math approaches laid out since they help you realize that there are multiple ways to get to the same answer and may help students feel more confident if you change the focus from what your answer is to how you got to that answer. I think this concept of mental math would be well introduce

Like I mentioned in my introduction post, I have always loved to do math. It makes sense to me; I understand how to manipulate the tools I'm given in order to solve the problems I'm faced with. To me, math is logical and non-subjective. However, many may disagree with me. I know my mum, for example, hates math. She is also a teacher and dreads having to teach math. And in our class at Brock I know some of the people at my table have expressed their frustration with math as well. Zimmerman, Alycia (2013, December 27) Using Lego To Build Math Concepts . Retreived from http://bit.ly/1inCRzE Why is that? Is the blame on the student for not engaging or on the teacher for not explaining in different ways? Or is it society for popularizing the idea that math is intangible for some people? I know when I was in school it was almost 'cool' to not be good at math, and ripping on math was commonly accepted. I think if we want to change attitudes and engage students about math

Hello! My name is Megan MacCuish and I’m a teacher candidate at Brock University in their junior/intermediate stream. One of the classes here is in how to teach mathematics to children in grade 4-10. The purpose of this blog is to share some of the strategies we learn in that class, and hopefully add to the existing online forum of teachers sharing ideas. Some of the teacher blogs I’ve seen have been so inspiring, and I hope to one day be a member of that enthusiastic and passionate teacher team.  Gotic, Stjepan  © ( 2014).  Prior to coming to Brock I attended Dalhousie University in Halifax for a degree in Environmental Planning. Since it wasn’t a very technical degree (more design focused) I didn’t have to take a lot of math. So my academic experience in math ended after taking introduction to Calculus parts 1 and 2. I’ve always enjoyed math, though, but I found that throughout my academic career I kind of hid my enthusiasm for math because it wasn’t really ‘cool’ to be