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.