Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Reflection Two



   "Mathematics is more than just the right or wrong answer, it is about solutions."

The Process is as Important as the Product

One of the reasons for people to dislike mathematics is that it is too rigid for it usually has only one correct answer to a math problem. However they seem to forget the process of thinking and satisfaction one can get after being able to solve a mathematic problem. Van De Walle, Karp & Bay-Williams (2013) stated that “[d]oing mathematics includes using justification as a mean of determining whether an answer is correct.” The reasoning and justification is as important as the answer in learning mathematics. Being able to reason is essential to understanding mathematics. It allows learners to be able to understand how mathematics makes sense. This is such important information for teachers since I have observed that many of our children are memorizing when they could be understanding. It is interesting to read how as a teacher, I can provide rich environments for learning mathematical reasoning by encouraging children to present their thinking to the class. For the pre-schoolers and kindergarteners, I would expect their explanations to be in their own language and often will be represented verbally or with objects.

Using Manipulative to Learn Mathematics
I agree that Mathematics is an abstract subject for young children. It is mostly numerals and does not seem to represent any meaning if physical materials are not used to support the development of mathematic concept or procedures. Using manipulative to teach Maths is common in kindergartens. Young children learn by hands on activities. You cannot just open up to a page in any book and expect them to know something without some kind of introduction first. That really goes for any level that you teach, but especially with early childhood. Children need to see it in front of them before they can see it on paper. Also, hands on activities make the lesson much more interesting However I am glad to read from the book that we should allow the children to explore the tools with appropriate guidance. Upon reflecting, very often I am over assisting by requesting them to follow what I am doing. Allowing children to learn mathematics concepts with tools seem like very easy, however I have seen children who initially find it difficult to coordinate their counting with the movement of their hands. This is an important foundation stage. In order for children to perform higher order calculation such as addition and multiplications, children must first be able to recognize and create examples to represent numbers.

Reference
Van de Walle, J.A., Karp, K.S. & Bay-Williams, J.M. (2013). Elementary and middle school mathematics. Teaching developmentally. (8th ed.). NY: Longman.

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