This story from Edutopia shows off some great ideas for implementing real world math strategies in everyday life. This is exactly what I have always preached about Math, and I'm really happy to have my own "lectures" backed up by the social sciences.
I'm going to brag now.
Way back during my first year of teaching, I taught the Challenge class (now known as the HA, or "high ability" class). However, at the time, the assistant principal taught all of the Math classes, except for one, which was given to me. They gave me the lowest of the low students at that time. When I say the lowest of the low (and we are talking the class of 2001-2002, so these kids are in their late 20's now), I mean the bottom eleven students in the 100+ fifth grade class.
That year, they were implementing a new curriculum, but being the Challenge teacher, I got to write my own. And my own was based on my experiences, both from IU--where I learned how to teach math, and Purdue, where I learned how to understand and do math. And I kicked it old school.
My students were taught first to learn their multiplication facts. Then we went from there to learning how to add and subtract, making sure it makes sense, then using those facts to add, subtract, multiply, and eventually divide fractions.
Then we did decimals. Then I showed them how fractions are just decimals, and decimals are just fractions.
I taught them that the "remainder" on their division problems should never be put as "R3", because "R3" could mean 3/1,000 or 3/4, which are very different amounts. So I taught them how to write their remainders as a fraction, or worst case scenario, a decimal.
After the second six weeks grading period (this was another time), I had a few more students who ended up in my math class. Not because they were now at the bottom, but because their parents wanted them in.
I showed them all of these things through real-life examples. Balancing your checkbook became a lesson on adding and subtracting decimals. Multiplication came around because of finding the area of a 12x16 room. And dividing was done to show that 1/4 is actually a division problem that worked out to 0.25.
Plus, I'm pretty sure that everyone who had me for math in my eighteen years of teaching fifth grade heard stories about my favorite math professor from Purdue, Dr. David Goldberg, who taught me to love math because it is everywhere; and my math professor from IU, Dr. Diana Lambdin, who taught me that it wasn't enough to be right, because I was going to have to teach a grade-school kid how I was right. Both of them taught me how to unlock the concept of math, and from there, everything else makes sense.
I can't wait to see where else I'm going to take these lessons, and it does me good to know that I have branches going out everywhere now.
I'm going to brag now.
Way back during my first year of teaching, I taught the Challenge class (now known as the HA, or "high ability" class). However, at the time, the assistant principal taught all of the Math classes, except for one, which was given to me. They gave me the lowest of the low students at that time. When I say the lowest of the low (and we are talking the class of 2001-2002, so these kids are in their late 20's now), I mean the bottom eleven students in the 100+ fifth grade class.
That year, they were implementing a new curriculum, but being the Challenge teacher, I got to write my own. And my own was based on my experiences, both from IU--where I learned how to teach math, and Purdue, where I learned how to understand and do math. And I kicked it old school.
My students were taught first to learn their multiplication facts. Then we went from there to learning how to add and subtract, making sure it makes sense, then using those facts to add, subtract, multiply, and eventually divide fractions.
Then we did decimals. Then I showed them how fractions are just decimals, and decimals are just fractions.
I taught them that the "remainder" on their division problems should never be put as "R3", because "R3" could mean 3/1,000 or 3/4, which are very different amounts. So I taught them how to write their remainders as a fraction, or worst case scenario, a decimal.
After the second six weeks grading period (this was another time), I had a few more students who ended up in my math class. Not because they were now at the bottom, but because their parents wanted them in.
I showed them all of these things through real-life examples. Balancing your checkbook became a lesson on adding and subtracting decimals. Multiplication came around because of finding the area of a 12x16 room. And dividing was done to show that 1/4 is actually a division problem that worked out to 0.25.
Plus, I'm pretty sure that everyone who had me for math in my eighteen years of teaching fifth grade heard stories about my favorite math professor from Purdue, Dr. David Goldberg, who taught me to love math because it is everywhere; and my math professor from IU, Dr. Diana Lambdin, who taught me that it wasn't enough to be right, because I was going to have to teach a grade-school kid how I was right. Both of them taught me how to unlock the concept of math, and from there, everything else makes sense.
I can't wait to see where else I'm going to take these lessons, and it does me good to know that I have branches going out everywhere now.
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