Classroom Visitors

During this past week Patricia Maxwell from the Department of Education had visited our classroom. She brought with her some very useful advice and creative ideas.

Now that I have seen the manipulatives that she brought with her I do recall more of my own memories from primary and elementary school. However, the first object she showed us I was not familiar with. This was a Geoboard. A Geoboard was a large flat square that had pegs on it that formed each smaller unit on the board. The Geoboard can be used for many different concepts and difficulties in a primary or elementary classroom. It can be used for shapes, counting, graphing, and calculating values such as area and primeter.

Next Patricia showed us some fun games you can play with students to make learning math more fun. The first game was a game that was laid out almost like a bingo card. There were several rows and columns of numbers that you needed to connect to get four in a row. At the bottom of the card were the numbers 0-9. You pick two numbers that multiply to give you a number on the card that you want and then the next player has to use one of the previous numbers and can change the other one to get the number they want. This continues until one player connects four numbers that are consecutively placed on the board. This could be used for adding, subtracting, or multiplying. In my own experience I had not encountered this before, the only fun game we used to play was regular bingo. This was for practice of number recognition.

The next game consisted of cards that had numbers written on them and the tens and ones value of another number. You went around the classroom asking who had a certain number that was written on your card in tens and ones and they must respond with their number and then ask the question again. This is done in a round so all students would get a turn.

The next item she showed us was connector blocks or linking cubes. These bring back many memories for me, we used them frequently in school. They are small, square, colored blocks that snap together. They can be used for making patterns, counting, color identification, graphing, 3D shapes, rotations and transformations.

She then showed us a useful webpage that we can use to help students get a better understanding of difficult concepts or just extra practice. This website is the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives (http://nlvm/usu.edu/). It can also be used as a tool for demonstration if materials are not available in your school.

I found this to be very helpful, it game me a start in thinking creatively about math and how it can be made more fun for students to enjoy instead of the traditional form of work sheets.

As well last week we got the pleasure of getting a crash course on how a SMART Board works. I have never seen a smart board until this semester and I was amazed to see it in action. With the way technology is changing and having such a diversity of students in each class a SMART Board is definitely the way to go. The learning possibilities are endless.

Mathematics Autobiography

To start off this entry I would like to say that my history with math has been quite extensive and it has been a major part of my life for the last 4 years. I have had good experiences and a few bad experiences but once you get over the bad ones it becomes quite useful.

As for the most part I do not remember much of what math looked like in my primary and elementary classrooms. I remember mostly in kindergarten the focus was mainly put on learning geometrical shapes from pictures and 3D objects. Entering the primary years of school I remember having workbooks that had tear out pages in them. These workbooks were used in class as practice and brought home as homework that had to be completed and passed in the next day. The pages of the workbooks contained small pictures of objects that were used for counting, adding and subtracting. Also I remember having an Abacus in both the primary and elementary classrooms. Small colored blocks that snapped together were used in classrooms to help students create patterns. In the elementary years I recall yellow blocks that came as 1 single block, 10 blocks joined together or a big block that contained 100 smaller blocks. These blocks were used to help students with ones, tens, and hundreds digits. I also remember having to bring home a multiplication table and memorize it until I knew it.

My best memory surrounding math with in grade 5 when we only had to know the times tables for single digit numbers and I had figured out a neat trick for multiplying any 2 digit number by 11 before most of my friends had any idea. For example 11x53=583 this is found quickly by taking 53 and adding the digits 5+3=8, then place 8 as the middle number. This worked well as long as the digits did not add up to be more then 9. For digits more then 9 I had another method. For example 11x67=737, this is easily shown with simple addition that looked like this: Take 67 and add a zero (also meaning multiply by 10) to get 670 then you have one 67 left to make 11 so you add the remaining 67 to 670 to get 670+67=737.

This memory greatly affected my love for math because I realized my abilities to manipulate numbers quickly and easily at a young age. Because I was good at math I liked it, and because I liked it I worked hard at it, and of course because I worked hard at it I got better at it.

My abilities in math were probably influenced by my teachers but I do not know how my teachers in primary and elementary school felt about math, if they enjoyed math then I’m sure they included the curriculum whenever possible, and if they didn’t like math then they didn’t seem to mind in my mind because I enjoyed it so much.

Assessment was done in a traditional way for the most part. Tests were given on paper with questions where you had to calculate the answers. They usually included an answer that was right or wrong. However through practice in the classroom the teacher would observe students to make sure everyone had the right idea on what to do and to further help those students who may have been struggling.

As I progressed through junior high and high school my views about math did not change. I had a teacher in grade 9 who explained math very well in a relevant manner and caught my attention to realize that math was more then just numbers. It was also in grade 9 when I really realized that I was good at math. Our school took part in the Pascal Math Competition from Waterloo University in Ontario and I took frisat place in our school.

In high school I was also blessed with a great math teacher that I had for all 3 years. He gave notes and questions but also brought in visual aids when available and let us work in pairs sometimes to figure out questions together. He would bring in models of unusual shapes like cones and tetrahedrons that could be taken apart so we could see how to get surface area; he would bring in the overhead projector and show us how to mark different aspects of a graph by using different colors and taught us how to use a graphing calculator but also kept our math skills fresh by not letting us use a calculator for simple operations. To make class fun we would have mini competitions, for example, when learning to use a graphing calculator to generate a list of random numbers we would see who could do it the fastest or who could get the biggest number, the winner would get a prize. This prize could be something as simple as a mini bag of Halloween or Christmas candy, depended on the occasion.

When I arrived at university I was unsure of what degree I was about to tackle but again my love of math and a great professor got me through math 1000 with high success. I decided to try math 1001 and then realized that it was the subject that I enjoyed the most and put most of my effort into. I didn’t complain about having to do assignments (in fact I usually had them done ahead of time) and I enjoyed explaining how to do problems to my friends. I continued with math in university and completed a Bachelor of Science with a major in Pure Math.

Below are a list of the courses that I have completed at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College and Memorial University. Most of these courses have been enjoyable and very successful, others have been quite difficult but well worth it in the end, and others I feel were so frustrating and confusing that I didn’t learn anything (although I’m sure I really did).

Math 1000 – Calculus I

Math 1001 – Calculus II

Math 2000 – Calculus III

Math 2050 – Linear Algebra I

Math 2051 – Linear Algebra II

Applied Math 2130 – Technical Writing in Math

Pure Math 2320 – Discrete Math

Stats 2510 – Stats for Physical Science

Math 3000 – Real Analysis I

Math 3001 – Real Analysis II

Pure Math 3320 – Abstract Algebra

Pure Math 3330 – Euclidean Geometry

Pure Math 3370 – Intro Number Theory

Pure Math 3340 – Intro Combinatorics

Applied Math 3260 – Ordinary Differential Equations I

Applied Math 3202 – Vector Calculus

Pure Math 3240 – Applied Graph Theory

Pure Math 4340 – Combinatorial Analysis

Pure Math 4341 – Combinatorial Designs

Today I feel that I have a great understanding of some math concepts and still enjoy it just as much or more than I did before. I try to make math a part of everyday life and I feel that I have good logic skills due to my background.