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!