Week 6 Mathematics

Math is everywhere !!

Within my previous blog posts I discussed the negative mindset students have towards math and the lack of motivation they have to work hard to understand it. Many students believe that math is purely memorization and that they just need to remember it for the test to achieve a good mark and then move on with life. HOWEVER, wouldn't students be more interested in mathematics and see the importance of it if they are shown the connection to real-life examples? I think yes!

HTLMcourse, (2014). Spider-Web. (Youtube Clip).
Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2h3dQ3U 

Some students came up with great examples of math within the world, one student mentioned snowflakes. Through observation, snowflakes follow a general hexagon shape and has 6 points. The reason for this is because a water molecule has 6 points as well, and when it freezes it becomes a snowflake.

HTLMcourse, (2014). Water Molecule.
(Youtube Clip). Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2h3dQ3U

An example of an animal that uses math would be a dolphin, did you know they could calculate with distance and time? Dolphins communicate using clicking sounds to find each other. The sound waves of this clicking sound travels to the other dolphin and back, this allows the dolphin to use the length of time it takes for the sound to come back and the quality of the sound to find their friend! However, dolphins are not the only example of an animal that uses math, there are many other animals such as a spider to create their webs and a snail to create their shell.

HTLMcourse, (2014). Dolphin Sound Waves. (Youtube Clip).
Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2h3dQ3U 

Another example to get students intrigued would be to connect math to sports! Yes, sports! Students are big on co-curriculars activities at school, that they would be able to take this to practice. Tennis, for example,  making that forehand and backhand strike with the racket to get the ball back to the other side of the court uses a lot of force and correct body positioning. This body positioning is using the proper angles to have his/her arm and body in place for the ball to return where she/he wants it to go. Another example of using angles in sports is soccer, the goalie positions himself/herself in a way that they are eliminating scoring possibilities by eliminating the angles for the attacker coming down the field.

Overall, I think connecting math to different things that students enjoy helps make it more intriguing and interesting to learn. Students will start to see math more within their daily lives and will be more interested in learning about it. A really nice resource I found offers different lesson plans to integrate Google Earth into the classroom to allow students to look at different distances, and can be found if you click here on Real World Math.

Thanks for reading!

Week 5 Mathematics

          From this weeks online class, the main message I got from the video I watched was that math is a subject with only a few general principles that are important to understand. Math is a subject where the most important thing is learning the big ideas but, many students think its about memorizing all the different equations. Now throughout high school I definitely thought math was purely memorization. I would memorize equations, steps on how to answer certain questions, and what equations usually went together to solve a question. Looking back, I think there would have been a lot less pressure if I was told to think more about the main idea to try to understand the problem better. At the time it was just easy to memorize things and hope they stuck with you until the test was over, and then I carried on to survive yet another unit in math and memorize more equations. HOWEVER, the most important thing to learning is knowing that if you memorize something it means you truly don't understand it. Memorization stays for a certain amount of time and then the knowledge is lost, however, taking the time to understand something allows students to process it through their mind in a way that helps them remember it. Different strategies students may use are through a song, an abbreviation, a story, whatever it may be, you will remember it! Im hoping as a future educator that I can help my students see the big picture and help them understand things so they don't have to force themselves to use memorization to get by.

                     via GIPHY

         This week I also completed my webinar discussing Financial Literacy. I was very nervous before our webinar started because I had never done a webinar before and it made me even more nervous thinking that there was going to be an error going live. Thankfully, it all worked out and the whole thing ran smoothly. Our target group was grade 4 students focusing on learning how to save and budget their money through real life scenarios.I enjoyed being able to see our participants during the webinar as it allowed everyone to interact together and students were able to learn in the comfort of their own home. I think our evaluators really enjoyed our main activity that challenged them to look through the food basics flyer to create a dinner for themselves with only $20.00.  This allowed them  to use addition to see the total amount of the food supplies they picked and allowed them to be creative in their own meal that they could then share with the rest of us online. We choose the food basics flyer because it shows students the deals they can get in the grocery store to help them get into the habit of trying to spend when things are on sale to save overall. This lesson could then be expanded to talk about and teach students how to calculate HST.  Students can then redo this activity and see if they need to modify their meals to include HST. This also can be connected to the physical education curriculum by seeing and trying to get students to create meals using different food groups to make sure they provide enough nutrition in their meals. Overall, I was very happy with how our webinar went and the participation of our classmates to make it successful.

Below is our activity:

Grocery store challenge!

SCENARIO

• You have arrived to the grocery store to create a dinner for yourself, however you only have $20.00 in your wallet. 
• Using the Food Basics Flyer, what items will you buy to make your dinner tonight? Remember you only have $20.00.
• Flyer: https://www.foodbasics.ca/flyer.en.html

Strkalj, N. (2017). Webinar Action Shot. (Personal Photo)
Retrieved from Personal Library.

Lastly, a helpful resource that I found interesting to look at was: http://www.edugains.ca/resourcesFL/Resources/Elementary/FinLitGr4to8.pdf 

Week 4 Mathematics

Math is Flexible, Creative and Fun!

I always knew math had several different ways to get to the same answer, but why did teachers only want one way for our work to be done? Was this to make sure we didn't create any errors along the way? To keep it consistent for everyone in the class? Who knows, but today is the day we make room for creativity and flexibility within the math environment!

Students in math often get discouraged if they do not understand a formula that they are not comfortable with. Now, I know- challenging yourself to figure out a question makes your brain smarter and stronger BUT when students provide different methods to get to the same answer, this shows flexibility!

Finger counting challenge on one hand! If we were to count 1 on the thumb, 2 on the index finger, 3 on the middle finger, 4 on the ring finger, and 5 on the pinky. We then would turn around and count 6 on the ring finger, 7 on the middle finger, 8 on the index finger, and 9 on the thumb. Then we turn around again and count 10 on the index finger, 11 on the ring finger and so on.

If we count this way, which finger are we on when we count the number 1000?

Below are two ways we solved this problem in our group and at if you click this link you can see a video describing this activity and other students ways to solving this problem. I think these types of questions are fun to get the class thinking in groups and work together to figure it out. In the end it is interesting to see the different ways students came to the same conclusion.

Strkalj, N. (2017). Problem Solving. (Personal Photo)
Retrieved from Personal Library.

Within this second photo, I figured that 10 lands on the index finger, 20 lands on the ring finger, 30 lands back on the ring finger, 40 lands on the index finger and 50 lands back on the index finger. I noticed this pattern continues until it lands on 100 on the ring finger. I then assumed the hundreds alternated between the index and ring finger. Therefore, 1000 would land on the index finger!

Strkalj, N. (2017). Problem Solving. (Personal Photo)
Retrieved from Personal Library. 

In our forum posts we were asked to solve the following equation  18 x 5=? It was interesting to see that my teacher candidates had different approaches to answering this question but all of them lead to the same answer, 90! I think allowing students to show their own way of solving a question demonstrates problem solving and creativity. Sharing with the class shows flexibility towards math as students are able to learn multiple of different ways to get to one answer. This shows students that one way or the highway is FALSE! Students are challenging themselves by figuring out different ways to solve equations and then also learning from their classmates on methods they never thought about that expands there brain growth! Below are some methods completed my fellow teacher candidates, feel free to comment if you had a different approach then these three! 

Strkalj, N. (2017) Math Equation. (Personal Photo)
Retrieved from Personal Library.

Until next week!

Week 3 Mathematics

Welcome to Week 3!

MISTAKES ARE GOOD!

Now you probably just read that and thought to yourself "how can making mistakes be good if the moment is so embarrassing?" Well I thought this too, but believe it or not making mistakes makes your brain smarter. If a student makes a mistake there is opportunity for brain growth and deeper understanding because they don't have this previous knowledge. Why else would they have made a pencil with an eraser on the end? TO MAKE MISTAKES !! Mistakes are supposed to be encouraged within the classroom, not frowned upon and labeled negatively. When a student is continuously getting every question correctly they are not growing their brain or challenging themselves to learn something new.  Students label this work as being "easy" because they are putting no thought or effort into it.

Now take this theory into the gym, when you want your arms or legs to get bigger and stronger, you continuously challenge yourself through different types of exercises and lifting different amounts of weights. No one goes to the gym and continuously repeats only the exercises they find easy to do or using the weights they find easy to lift. If someone were to do this, they would see no progress. People need to challenge themselves and work through it!! 

Making mistakes also shows that the student is taking ownership of their work by trying to solve it themselves through different possible solutions. This is where students will start to figure out what works and what does not work for them. Also, the best part about making mistakes is the amazing feeling you get after finally solving the question that was making your life miserable for the x amount of hours.  Now if your reading this and disagree with this statement, you are lying to yourself. That moment of achievement is amazing and suddenly you can look that question in the eye and say "YOU CAN'T INTIMIDATE ME ANYMORE!"

The video below is great because celebrities such as Ariana Grande, Drake, athletes such as Shaquille O'Neal and authors such as Gary Vaynerchuk talk about needing mistakes to learn and move forward. Showing students videos of individuals that they may look up to or know may allow students to make that connection and want to continue to take risks to making mistakes.

Remember, Making mistakes is just a workout for your brain!

Week 2 Mathematics

This week I was reminded of a fixed vs. growth mindset. To remind whoever is reading this post, a fixed mindset is when a student believes that they cannot achieve something because they are not "smart enough" or that they "were not born with that knowledge." A growth mindset is when a student believes that they can do something even if they are struggling. This is when they are challenging themselves instead of giving up. It is important as educators to be aware of these different mindsets within our classroom as they can occur throughout any subject and appear with any student. Now this connects back to my first reflection as it branches off of my post about negative attitudes toward math. If a student has a negative attitude toward math then they probably have a fixed mindset. Now these kids are not stuck with a fixed mindset forever, it is in our job as educators to make children aware of these negative thoughts that are holding them back to hopefully convert them to a growth mindset.

Retrieved from http://big-change.org/growth-mindset/ 

Some tips I found to help shift students attitudes toward difficult subjects such as math are by making them aware that the brain is capable of getting stronger and smarter. This happens by the cells called neutrons in your brain that are connected to a thousand other neurons. The strength, number and location of the neurons affects how the brain works and change all the time depending on our experiences. By creating new experiences it creates new connections and strengthens previous connections to make the brain smarter.

Retrieved from http://www.tooandroid.com/use-these-5-apps-to-walk-more-and-improve-brain-health/

The video below is John Legend discussing his journey to becoming famous. He talks about the amount of effort he had to put to get where he is today and how many times he failed getting there but never gave up. I think this is an amazing video to show students as it is a short clip and someone they could look up to or hear on the radio.


Also check out this awesome TedTalk discussing a Growth Mindset!



So let's help students get into a growth mindset to not only gain short-term achievement but long-term success!!!

Year 2 Week 1 Recap!

Welcome back to my blog! I hope everyone had a great summer and are excited for the new school year to start.

                      
                      via GIPHY


I am now entering year two of teachers college at Brock University and I am very excited to be finishing up my program!! Reflecting on this week it was exciting to think about it being my last first day of school as a student to one day being my first day of school as an educator! A little food for thought.

So lets begin!

Our professor began the lecture with a card trick... yes you read that properly.  I thought it was a fun way to get your students engaged, remove any nervous butterflies and get them ready to learn! The trick began by splitting the deck into two piles, and then splitting those two piles in half again. With four equal piles of cards on the table, our professor picked up the first pile, took three cards from the top and placed them at the back of that same pile. Our professor then took three cards from the top and distributed one to the top of the remaining three piles. These steps were completed for each pile and once that was done the top card of each deck was revealed and this was when everyones jaw hit the floor because each card was an ace!

CRAZY RIGHT?

So now everyone's excited because our professor told us it was an easy trick to learn and we got time to figure it out for ourselves so we could show our friends and family after class. So the class tried, and tried again but no one could get it. This is when the teacher moment kicked in and taught us that as educators our word choice is extremely important when we are talking to students. By labelling the card trick as "easy" it leaves students upset and frustrated when they cannot figure it out because they do not feel smart enough. Therefore, it is  important as educators to never tell a student something is easy, especially if they are having difficulty understanding something. It is always great to tell a student that something is challenging/difficult/tricky that way when they understand or accomplish it they will feel successful. This also gets the student to open up to you when they are stuck, whereas if you as an educator told the student something was easy and they never got it, they may fear opening up to you again.

This is why students have negative attitudes towards math because they are told it is easy and once they cannot figure it out they do not feel smart enough. Students also often dislike math because of the amount of formulas they must learn to use and this can often lead to frustration if students do not know how to apply the formulas properly.  Most students get scared at the amount of numbers in one equation or the different letters or symbols incorporated in math. Off the bat this discourages students from trying to solve a question since it seems overwhelming to them just to look at and they fear failing. This is a huge problem since math only has one correct answer but can have multiple ways of getting there. Students often do not like being wrong and find it embarrassing if it is in front of the whole class.  Students also dislike math because they do not see the real-life connection on how to apply it and use it on a day-to-day basis that leads to students viewing math as a "waste of time."

Sean ManEntee. (June 10, 2010) maths.(Flickr Image). Retrieved from  http://bit.ly/2xZQgLN 

All of this can be avoided if we, as future educators can try to eliminate these negative attitudes within our classroom by making math a fun learning environment. Math CAN be fun! We just need to prove it and move away from these stereotypes that are clenching on to the word that kids hate most.


So heres a start:

A fun game to show your students is Game about Squares that we also played in our lecture this week. It allows students to work through different levels without instruction, so it is a game based on trial and error. This teaches students that mistakes are accepted and should not be feared as it shows you are challenging yourself as a student. Hopefully after students play this game they will take more risks to make mistakes and slowly eliminate that fear in the classroom.

Nicolina's Activity Video

Hello members of the Tandia Team and judges, welcome to my page!

My name is Nicolina and I am a Consecutive Teacher Education student at Brock University finishing year one.

Below I have attached my video that explains the financial literacy activity I have created and incorporated into the Geography curriculum.

Materials Needed:

1. Sharpie/Black Marker       
   
2. Monopoly Money
3. Coloured Cards 
4. Coloured Tape 

ENJOY :)

Getting into the Holiday Spirit!

During my placement before the Christmas Holidays began, my grade 5/6 class and I created a Festive Minion for our classroom door to get into the Holiday Spirit!

Enjoy!

Nicolina Strkalj. (December 20th, 2016). Festive Minion. (Personal Image).
Retrieved from personal photo library.