Why Is Math So Hard? Week #1 Reflection
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.
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 we need to end this narrative. We need to teach students in a way that they understand. Some students understand word problems while others need to 'see' the math and what it represents in order to understand (I know this is true for me). In class this week we looked at a few different strategies for engaging students with math using blocks for counting and even for making graphs to represent factorials. The image above depicts one method for using lego cubes to explain fractions. Once the concept leaves the abstract phase it can be much easier understood by visual or tactile learners.
Another of the perspectives we were introduced to in our first week was that of David Milch, through a TED talk by David Meyer. Milch argues that television today leaves us with an "impatience for irresolution"(Milch, being interviewed by Rauch, 2006) because sitcom drama is resolved within 20 minutes, but real-life problems take considerably longer to solve. Meyer applies this reasoning, in his TED talk, to math problems; they take time to solve, and students are not prepared to spend the time required. When I go into the classroom I hope I'll be able to keep this schema in mind when helping students work through problems, and hopefully understanding where they're coming from will help me be more patient with them.
While I was reading parts of the curriculum this week I noticed that the expectations are very clear and specific. This was hugely helpful when I began preparing my presentation on strategies to teach prime factorization. I was able to clearly outline the expectations for each grade and then from there fine-tune the activities to suit each grade. The activity set that I chose was based on constructivism, so students in grade 8, for example, work through what they learned in grades 6 and 7 and use that as a base for their new grade 8 content. The activity was first 'catching' prime numbers using the sieve of Eratosthenes and then using the results from that to develop factor trees and then using the factor trees to find highest common factors and lowest common multiples. If you're interested in seeing a break down of the strategies I've attached a link here.
Moving forward, I think I will need to do a little refresher/crash course on each strand of the curriculum before I attempt to teach it, but I'm sure it will all come back relatively quickly (although re-learning lowest common multiples/highest common factors did take a while ...).
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| Zimmerman, Alycia (2013, December 27) Using Lego To Build Math Concepts. Retreived from http://bit.ly/1inCRzE |
Another of the perspectives we were introduced to in our first week was that of David Milch, through a TED talk by David Meyer. Milch argues that television today leaves us with an "impatience for irresolution"(Milch, being interviewed by Rauch, 2006) because sitcom drama is resolved within 20 minutes, but real-life problems take considerably longer to solve. Meyer applies this reasoning, in his TED talk, to math problems; they take time to solve, and students are not prepared to spend the time required. When I go into the classroom I hope I'll be able to keep this schema in mind when helping students work through problems, and hopefully understanding where they're coming from will help me be more patient with them.
While I was reading parts of the curriculum this week I noticed that the expectations are very clear and specific. This was hugely helpful when I began preparing my presentation on strategies to teach prime factorization. I was able to clearly outline the expectations for each grade and then from there fine-tune the activities to suit each grade. The activity set that I chose was based on constructivism, so students in grade 8, for example, work through what they learned in grades 6 and 7 and use that as a base for their new grade 8 content. The activity was first 'catching' prime numbers using the sieve of Eratosthenes and then using the results from that to develop factor trees and then using the factor trees to find highest common factors and lowest common multiples. If you're interested in seeing a break down of the strategies I've attached a link here.
Moving forward, I think I will need to do a little refresher/crash course on each strand of the curriculum before I attempt to teach it, but I'm sure it will all come back relatively quickly (although re-learning lowest common multiples/highest common factors did take a while ...).
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