Miss M's Learning Space

I'm sure we've all heard about growth mindsets before by now. Generally, a growth mindset is one where you embrace challenge and believe you can accomplis anything you set your mind to. A fixed mindset, on the other hand, is one where you believe your mind is 'fixed' and you can't learn something you don't know naturally. It's summarized in the following graphic. Retrieved from: http://big-change.org/growth-mindset/  In math, especially, they're important. As discussed briefly last week, there is not a great attitude towards math in our schools. Part of addressing that, is breaking the idea that only some people are good at math and those who aren't never will be. We need to praise students for effort and encourage them to continuously seek challenges and opportunities for growth. The following video discusses this idea as it relates to math. This idea of not praising students for being 'smart' is new to me, but I can immediatel...

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...