"Your brain is like a muscle"

This past week we had one of our final math classes for 8P29, we ended on a likelihood that we would talk away with a lot of knowledge gained!

We started with a fun Mind On activity and a great way to introduce Data Management and Probability, and funny that I would not have thought of this idea. Definitely will be Minds On activity that will be tucked away in the math toolkit of resources to use in the classroom. The collection of data done on a stem & leaf chart brought back memories to elementary days, but funny enough I could not remember how data collection of a stem & leaf chart were done. I really enjoyed how we started with a small prediction and really brought it along for the entire duration of the class and used that data to continue with an example to explain data management.

The different activities we did throughout the class with the leveling of the pattern blocks for determining mean and the cereal box example were great examples that tied data management and practicality together. It’s important to have data collection happen with a purpose, as it mentions in Making Math Meaningful. It started by asking good questions, making the lesson fun and meaningful. Both data management and probability connect different math units together and makes learning more meaningful and with a purpose. Important to keep in mind with data management is the question being asked. As educators it is important we have our students understand the importance of open-ended questions to answers that relate to what the students have learned and elicit meaningful data for the right target audience. 

I enjoyed doing the small mean activity where we had to find three numbers and then four and find the mean of those numbers. Was never taught how to find the mean without a calculator and I loved learning that by simply finding the middle number you will find the mean…developing that growth mindset! Learning a new trick of finding mean was added to the toolkit of resources. As I was reading through the text something I enjoyed learning is how to act out the notion of finding the mean. The text talks about giving the students the opportunity to understand the concept of mean by acting it out physically in a class setting. I personally love the concept of adding physical movement to any class if possible, but with math it can make it that much more enjoyable and seeing a concept in math has very rewarding feeling, a feeling that I have felt over the course of these past few months.

An important concept that I felt was missing during my education in mathematics is the notion of when and how to display the data that has been collected. We learned how to create a chart or graph, learned basic ones such as bar, chart, scatter plot, pie graph don’t remember the pictograph but think that one can be really fun for primary grades when learning about graphs and representing the data of how many people voted for a favorite pet for example. It is important for us educators to understand when the best time is to use the different types of graphs and educate our students on which graph would work best to represent the set of data gathered keeping in mind our audience.

I enjoyed the technology aspect we explored as well with the Gizmo’s and the tinkerplots. It is important for us educators to continue learning and become expertise in our profession by continuing to learn new and innovate ways to teach. The Gizmo game provided a fun game that helped us gather data that we can then represent using a graph, made math fun mostly because the data reflected my scores of the activity, gave math a meaning.

Lastly I really enjoyed the video of Class Dojo and will definitely be replayed in my classroom when I become an educator. Comparing the brain to a muscle is brilliant and a Phys. Ed Major like myself really enjoyed the pun! It is extremely important to educate our students on the importance of exploring ways of learning and explaining to children that it is okay to make mistakes and find a different way to solve a problem. Students will miss 100% percent of the shots they don’t take, so why not take that shot and make a mistake and learn how to bounce back and find a different solution to the answer.