Be Messy

Reflection 3

Top 5 Things to Look for in a Summer Camp. The Huffington Post. (2015). Retrieved online from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tara-chklovski/top-5-things-to-look-for-_b_7429818.html 

Highlights

The highlight of this week’s class for me was the open ended questions. There was an activity in class where in groups we had to take closed ended questions and turn them into open-ended questions. I realized that open-ended questions give students a lot of room for thinking. Many students will have a variety of solutions for one question. This encourages thinking and creativity. This can also empower students to come up with their own strategies for a certain problem. When students become thinkers they would want to explore around. Exploring gives students room to make mistakes. Mistakes can take them to the correct solutions. Therefore, I think that mistakes shouldn’t be looked down upon, because it can grow brains.

Make a Mistake

Math is a world of mistakes. You are encouraged to try different ways, explore, experiment around, and have fun with the challenges that math can provide. Students should never be discouraged if they make a mistake, but they should be encouraged to try their ways differently. Jo Boaler says, the more mistakes you make, the more your brain grows. Students should be encouraged toward a growth mindset. All students should have a positive attitude and say, “yes I can do this!” for any challenge that is presented in front of them. So how can you allow your students to make mistakes?

·      Make a safe learning environment

·      Encourage students when they make mistakes

·      Have less competition in the classroom

·      Make your classroom a learning environment

·      Let students learn from each other

·      Create a respectful environment in the classroom

·      Come up with strategies that tell students making mistakes is okay

·      Encourage growth mindset

·      Show your students real life examples of people who became successful by making mistakes over and over again

Above is a list of ways that a teacher can use to let students feel comfortable making mistakes. Students should feel that if they make mistakes, they can learn from it. The journey does not end only when you make a mistake, but you continue experimenting until you get your “ah-ha” moment.

Not About Speed

Math is about quality rather than quantity. Some of the videos that I saw in the math mindset module reminded me of multiplication drills that I used to do as a student. Speed never taught me multiplication tables. I might have ended up just memorizing numbers, but never understood those numbers. At least I did not understand until I started to take my time and learn by myself. I have taught myself math throughout elementary school, because I never really understood anything from my classes.

I think that speed can intimidate students, and when you are intimidated you can get stressed. It is hard to think under stress. If you are fast are you really learning? Understanding math deeply is more important than how fast you can solve a problem.

I want to encourage students to think deeply about a problem so that they understand the core concept. If they understand the core concept they can then solve any problem at hand. In my future classes, as a future teacher, I want to make a difference in how math is taught to students. I want students to have fun and to like math as much as they would like any other subject.

References

Boaler, Jo. Mistakes Grow Your Brain. (2016). Retrieved online from https://www.youcubed.org/think-it-up/mistakes-grow-brain/

It is all About Growth

Reflection 2

Highlight of the Day

            This week’s class was very interesting. I got to play a card game on top of learning new tricks in solving math problems! I really enjoy my ‘ah-ha’ moments. They just click with me and then stay in my long-term memory storage where I never forget. So let me start off with what stood out to me the most this class.

The Shepherd Problem. Retrieved online from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kibaFBgaPx4 

The class started off with the shepherd problem. This problem was really interesting because it really shows that some students are not thinking when they are reading the problem. Students might think math is all about getting an answer whether it makes sense or not. They are not used to sitting back, relaxing, and thinking about the problem. Does the wording even make sense? Do I even need to solve the problem? This makes me think that for some students, having no answer to a problem means failure, so maybe out of this fear they would write down whatever answer they could get out of the numbers given in the problem.

This also makes me think, do teachers make an environment where students are fearful of making mistakes? How can I as a teacher take away their fear and let them stay stress-free? I really think that it is time to change the environment of math classrooms. I am really happy that I am becoming a teacher in this age. It is a great time to innovate, experiment, and grow to succeed. This takes me to a whole new topic that I really want to talk about: “Growth Mindset.”

Grow...

            Notice how earlier I mentioned: “Grow to succeed.” If you have a growth mindset you are likely to succeed as compared to having a fixed mindset. This concept is entirely new to me since I started teacher’s college. However, it is also becoming a very familiar topic that I am very comfortable with now. Deep down when I didn’t realize it, I also have a growth mindset.

It wasn’t until late high school and university that I realized I can do well in math when I practice often. It took me a while to understand that while facing ups and downs throughout the process. I used to believe that if I see a problem I could solve it right away. However, that was the case only with easy problems, but when it came to harder problems I was usually taken off guard. When I finally felt confident enough to start practicing problems after problems, I started to do quite well in math. All it took was the realization that all I need to do is practice, and then I can do well. It was not only about being smart, it was about practice and having room for mistakes.

I learned a very perceptive concept today as well, and that was not to tell students that they are smart. It will hinder their abilities and they would start to have a fixed mindset instead. Students will then just want to keep up with their smart image and focus on solving easy problems instead. I found an interesting article to read on ABC news that also mentions with hard work intelligence grows. The article that I read was written by Joy Phenix and it was called: “Why You Shouldn’t Tell Your Kids They are ‘Smart’.” Certainly, this idea is not an alien anymore, but is being incorporated in other places.

I want to instill that in my future students too. I want to make them feel that with hard work they can accomplish a lot. Sometimes just being smart is not enough, if you think you are smart, you will stop there; your growth will stop there. Then when you are faced with bigger challenges, you won’t be ready.

References

Phenix, Joy. Why You Shouldn’t  Tell Your Kids They are ‘Smart’. ABC News via Good Morning America. Retrieved online from http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/lifestyle/2012/02/why-you-shouldnt-tell-your-kids-theyre-smart/. Sept 18, 2016.

Go Deep!

Reflection 1

Before starting playing this game, do you ask yourself why is one box moving right and the other moving up?
Exercise your intuition.
Image retrieved online from http://gameaboutsquares.com 

Here I am back on my blog to talk more about math. To be honest, I never thought even blogging about math requires thinking about the main idea, just like thinking what is the concept behind a certain math formula. Well, after much thinking and reflection I think I am ready to share my thoughts.

I find my math classes very interesting, because I get to be two personalities at once: Student and Teacher. It is now not just about solving the problem, finishing it and handing it in for marks. Math is now about solving the problem to make it easier for our students. Math is now about finding different ways to solve a particular problem. Math is now about thinking from the student’s perspective and connecting it with the teacher’s resources. So how do I fit in as a teacher?

Can I solve the grades 4-8 EQAO problems with no difficulty? Yes I can, but can I solve it in a way that my student’s can understand it? Do I specifically understand how I solved the problem? Can I explain to myself why I solved the problem that particular way?

Math is all about ideas now. Whether I passed all my math classes in my previous school years including university level classes does not matter so much anymore. Math is not just about doing it now, but it is about why am I doing it the way I do it. I want my students to understand the idea behind it. I want my students to understand how they got to the results. I do not want it to be a ‘plug n’ chug’ class for them.

Now for students to be able to understand the idea of math, they have to have space for trials. Trials allow you to solve a particular problem few times by making mistakes. Yes! Making mistakes is key here. If someone out there does not agree with me, at least Jo Boaler agrees with me. In an article Gary Antonick mentions that Jo Boaler said the following to him:

“Good teachers have said this for a long time — mistakes help us. We can learn from mistakes. But this is a much more powerful message: that we can learn only from making mistakes. We need kids making mistakes. If kids are not making mistakes — if they’re not struggling — we’re limiting their brain growth....” (Jo Boaler: Mathematical Mindsets, by Gary Antonick)

I think students will make mistakes if they feel safe enough to do so. They will feel safe enough to make mistakes if they do not fear something. I ask myself sometimes what could students fear the most in a classroom setting? I think it is punishment, getting put down, being looked down upon or being made of fun. It is easy to be made fun of in a math classroom. I think it is up to the teacher to eliminate all of that and make it fun for everyone. If they solve a problem wrong they should not get penalized for it, let them play around with it, discover, think, and be messy! It will get them somewhere.

References

Antonick, Gary. Jo Boaler: Mathematical Mindsets. The New York Times. http://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/boaler-math-mindset/?_r=0. April 18, 2016.