Day 2 & 3 (17 & 18 July)

Another two days of insightful learning in class, solving problems that I had never attempted before. While we attempted solving the problems, I noticed that we have yet to filter away from our didactic thinking which we were being moulded from young.  The activities were open-ended alright, but we were not trained to see it that way.  I hope by the end of this module, we will be able to do so.

The Math Trail is really interesting and I know children will definitely enjoyed it.  It had gotten all of us in a group to analyze, discuss and listening to each others opinions and perspectives.  Nobody knows the correct answers to all the problems but only working out on the possibilities.  A guess this activity will entice children to love mathematics.

Coming back to class, the fractions to me is a killer.  Though it did refreshed some memories but I find it tough.  I told myself to focus on the learning points when teaching the children is the main aim here. Examples like how to use appropriate mathematical terms when teaching, the precise ways of asking the questions and allowing children to look for probable ways to give their answers. 

What I find close related to what I am current practicing is from reading the text on chapter 8 since   its the emergent stage of learning numbers.  After we have adopted Growing with Math, teaching aides such as ten frames, missing part cards, number charts, etc... including the problem story approach in chapter 9 are no longer strange to me.  In fact, the learning of number concepts and number sense is what we have been practicing for the last two years. Children had been learning to count cardinal numbers, ordinal numbers, number bonding for addition, learn multiplication through number groupings and division through sharing.

However, the readings of these chapters had extended my knowledge with  how I could used the suggested activities, not only to bring children to next level of learning but how to use them for differentiated teaching as well.