Can You Guess What We Learned This Week?

          As a (pre-service) teacher we are constantly warned about taking precautions during our lesson plans. This means always remaining politically correct or unbiased, ensuring inclusivity and avoiding (some) pedagogy’s or tasks that me be an issue to parents/guardians. When I thought about these precautions I often associated them with subjects in the arts, for example talking about global issues, politics or religion. This week in math however, I was (once again) shocked by the precautions that need to be taken with some units, such as data management and probability.

©vecteezy

          I’ve learned this year that successful teaching is about getting your point across in a way that is interesting and engaging for the students. Often this means assigning tasks that seem like play but surround elements of the unit or topic being studied. For example, we’ve spent a lot of time this term playing and reviewing online math games that could possibly be used with our own students. When teaching data management and probability, one of the best ways to incorporate the elements of play is by using dice or playing cards. However, the use of these instruments can often be associated with gambling and therefore may cause an issue for some parents/guardians. This is not to say we should avoid using these tools altogether, as they can be very helpful. As teachers we just need to be ‘smooth’ about our practices. First, we need to get to know both our students as well as their parents (and family dynamic) before we begin testing any questionable boundaries. Second, we should learn to address these tools in a way that avoids the gambling issues. For example, we can use different names. Instead of dice, we call them number blocks, and so on as to ensure we are disconnecting them from their associating to gambling.

         

This is our Stem and Leaf data!

Pat consistently shows us the benefits of making small changes and altering typical activities in order to make them more fun and exciting. There are so many traditional games or tasks that have been done over and over throughout school and therefore can become less exciting for the students and in turn, cause them to be less engaged. One important lesson I’ve learned through this math class is we don’t have to break our brains trying to think of completely new activities, we just need to find ways to change old ones to make them more fun again. An example of this happened this week during class when Pat was talking about making estimates. Traditionally, this is done by talking about guessing how many jelly beans are in a jar. However for us, Pat used oreos in a jar instead. The activity remains the same and the educational aspect does not change, however it made it more exciting for us because it was something new!  Each member of the class estimated how many oreos were in the jar and then we used that information to make a stem and leaf plot. It was a great way to introduce a new concept!