Miss M's Learning Space

People often dislike math because they believe that math involves memorizing rules and methods, and should be learned in isolation involving correct/incorrect answers. They also often believe there’s no room for creativity and they need to be able to do math quickly in order to be good at math. These assumptions/beliefs are incorrect and don’t accurately represent what math is about. In order to facilitate healthier beliefs about math we need to allow students the opportunity to explore math reasoning (i.e. discussing ideas and problems with peers and allowing them to 'reason' to an answer). In addition, we need to teach math in the context in which it exists rather than in isolation to any other mathematical concept. The video below summarizes this idea. By presenting students with the opportunities to explore math and also by showing them where math can go, I think we can inspire creativity and a curiosity in math that will allow them to be successful. 

This week we continued to explore several strategies outlined in our textbook  Making Math Meaningful  (Small, 2012). Specifically, strategies regarding operations with decimals and fractions, and understanding the relationship between the two.  It's easier, in my opinion, to start with fractions. There are several strategies for operations (multiplication, division, addition, subtraction) involving fractions that were presented in class. In terms, again, of classroom application I would begin with addition/subtraction since that would help develop an understanding of what fractions are before continuing onto multiplication/division. The most effective way, I thought, of explaining addition/subtraction of fractions was the visual representation we explored. It compares the fractions to a whole so students can estimate whether the result will be less than or greater than one. Using lego or strips of paper (which is what we did) you can add fractions with different de...