Math is Everywhere

It’s crazy to think that just two months ago we were entering our second semester and now we are about to embark on our next adventure in our placements. With the anticipation of finding out where we would be placed and what grades we were about to teach the wait is now over! Most of us know where we are off to next week and can beginning pooling together the resources and tools we have collected in all our classes to begin planning our lessons and units!

Concluding our accelerated six-week mathematics course was online modules discussing how mathematics is seen in our everyday lives and a live webinar on assessment and report card writing. I believe report card writing will be a skill that will be mastered more with time and practice as we continue in our world of teaching. Assessment is a critical part in a student’s learning and should be practiced and something we should hope to master as educators. It is impossible to think we as teacher’s can mark everything that student’s do and include them as assessment for learning. A major part in a student’s success is the ability to do self-assessment and reflection on their own learning and work towards achieving their goals. We as their teachers must provide the students with the resources and knowledge to successful do just that. Three important criteria tips taken from the webinar is to ensure report cards are:

• Precise 
• Personalized 
• Meaningful; 

When making comments on report cards we should definitely have each of these key tips in mind!

A great topic that was discussed with the group was how important it is for us teachers to provide examples of how students can practice what there are learning at home for their parent/guardians. Over the years I have experienced this first hand with family and my older cousins needing support to help their children. Lastly it is extremely important that what is on the report card does not come to a surprise for the parents and the students themselves. It is extremely important to have the students aware of their progress in school and keep the parents in the know as well.

John P. Wood (2006). Schoolies [Online image]. Retrieved from https://i.pinimg.com/

 There is no doubt that math is all around is and plays a role in our everyday lives and by doing so helps us educators connect the practicality of learning mathematics with our student’s education. I’ve blogged about it in previous posts about the importance of making mathematics meaningful to the students which in turn will increase their understanding and eagerness to learn. Throughout this six week course, we listen to a number of educational videos relating to mathematics and how to make it meaningful, listed below I have summarized what some of the important things taken from each module include;

ü  Math is part of our everyday lives and we need to embrace the connection to real life mathematical problems for our students to connect and relate to mathematics in more than a subject but rather and everyday occurrence.

ü  Mathematics can be more enjoyable for students when played in a non-traditional unstructured app or math game that has math students thinking and doing math concepts, however in a non-traditional, fun and engaging way.

ü  In order for us to teach mathematics with a growth mindset, we must let go of old traditions and become friendly and open to new and empowering ways of teaching math.

ü  Allow students to collaboratively work together to solve problems and use visuals! Visualizing to solve a problem will help the students to further deepen their knowledge when they communicate their visual representation of a question we asked them to solve.

ü  The importance is not on memorization but rather understand the few key points to solve questions. Help students to develop foundation to problem solving by exploring open ended questions, with multiple opportunities to start and grow

ü  No one student will solve a question the same way and that goes to show the diverse understanding each student has. Let’s make sure we as the teachers provide as much opportunities for the student to be successful. That is with open-ended, parallel and rich tasks.

ü   It is important as an educator to want the best for your students and to not only reward them when they are doing good with praise but also encourage them to continue growing in both times of success and failure. We must remember the impact words and praise have to our students and know how our students take constructive criticism and ensure we are delivering it in a meaningful way

As our chapter for mathematics in Teacher’s College comes to an end, we turn to the beginning of the next which has us applying our knowledge and understand to real life application…which is TEACHING!!