Week 6!

         This week we focused on our last section in the strand number sense and numerations, touching upon Ratios, Rate and Proportions. A ratio can be expressed as either a fraction (2/3) or a ratio (2:3) expressing a comparison of quantities that are the same units. A rate is a comparison or ratio of two different measurements that are different units, for example, distance and time (110km/hr). Lastly, proportion is an equation that shows equivalent ratios in fraction form, for example, 3/4=9/12.

        Some things that stuck out to me this week were the activities within the presentations. Below you will find a picture with 3 fun, and engaging activities that you can use in your classroom to teach these concepts!

        On the left you will see two pie charts, the students were asked to organize the different foods into their food groups and label the percentages of each group onto the pie graph. I think this exercise is very beneficial because they are not only looking at a math problem but are also incorporating health concepts into the lesson as well. Students are required to know their food groups in order to complete this question to answer it correctly. In the second portion students are asked to than show the percentages of foods that are junk and healthy food. Here again students should know the differences.

       In the middle we played the price is right, looking at different bookstores and the different costs per round. For each round the students were asked to figure out what bookstore would offer the cheapest value for 5 books. This question is beneficial for students to use if they were at a grocery store, shopping for clothes or trying to figure out what store would offer than the cheapest and best deal.

       On the right, we looked at a recipe that I thought was creative and interesting because students can also go home and attempt to make these oat bars! It looks at the quantities of each ingredient, and asks the students to alter the recipe that is originally for 10 people, for now 30 people. I think these types of questions are great because it is incorporating real life situations for the students to see the connection with what their learning in the classroom and how they can use it in their daily lives. This makes learning become more meaningful!

       The great thing about all these activities is that you can modify and alter them to different concepts or subjects within your classrooms! Creating a fun, creative and positive learning environment that connects to real-life situations that they can take out of the classroom. It's nice when students are able to see a connection with what their learning, and can give that extra motivation to learn!

Week 5!

For this week’s math class we focused on integers, adding positive numbers, and negative numbers together! For example, 5 + (-3)= 2.  A tough concept for most to grasp onto so what was great about this week was we learned some different manipulative a teacher could use in the classroom to create a better understanding environment for students. Some manipulative that can be used are: base team blocks, connecting cubes, games, spinners, and counters. Using manipulative’s is beneficial for students because it allows them to visualize something and move it around, whereas seeing the numbers on a piece of paper may be intimidating and confusing for some.

What really stuck with me this week was a riddle that helps students remember and understand integers. This riddle is about a Town, and uses good/ bad people leaving and entering the town as positive or negative factors to the town. 

I think applying riddles like the one above, songs and visuals is very beneficial for students to learn a concept. It allows them to remember something easily and can potentially stick with them in the future. I know I would reminisce with friends and talk about the fun things we used to do in school and laugh at the fact that we still remembered it. This is what I want my future students to be like, I want them to look back and say remember this time? or I have no problem with multiplication because my teacher made us sing a song I still remember. I hope to make a positive impact on my students in the future, and believe that this is a better approach for students to learn as it will end up sticking with them longer than you think, rather than memorizing something for a test and already forgetting it a week later. 

And that's my wrap up for this week! Stay tuned for Week 6!

Week 4!

Welcome back!

This week we focused on decimals and fractions. I was one of the three students to present  and I focused my lesson solely on the relationship between decimals and fractions. To prep for my presentation and develop a better understanding of this topic I found this Youtube video extremely helpful. Fast forward to 3:40 to the decimal portion of the video.



It is important to teach students the meaning of each number value before AND after the decimal as this video outlines the base-ten number system. For example,  14.738 represents (1 tens, 4 ones, 7 tenths, 3 hundredths and 8 thousandths).  I highly recommend looking at the example she demonstrates at 4:30 minutes in the video to use in your classroom as an introduction to this topic. It provides a clear understanding that I believe will help students get comfortable right off the bat!

Roland O'Daniel. (February 25, 2010). Exit slips. (Online Image). Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2cVWoyi 

Above you see an image of three different ways a student demonstrates what 0.9 can represent. Students LOVE visuals, and what better way to teach students fractions then with PIZZA. Yes you read that correctly, it wasn't your hunger taking over your mind. Pizza is a great representation that you can use to explain fractions to your students, but be careful with this because if the pizza isn't perfectly circular each piece cannot be equal to one another. 

I found this fraction pizza game online called Tony Fraction's Pizza Shop. It creates orders at the top screen, allowing the students to create the pizza on their own and pressing "send" when they completed the order. If the student creates the pizza correctly they get the cost of the pizza in their earnings, however if the student gets the order wrong, a message appears on the screen stating "Incorrect. Your costumer is not happy. $2.00 off" that comes out of their earnings. I think its a fun way for students to learn, and can motivate students to see how much they can earn (even though it's not real money...sigh). 

Regarding our time in class, after presenting I reflected what went well and what did not. This is great to do to know what to change and keep the next time I choose to use this activity again. I definitely enjoyed creating a lesson because it allowed me to refresh on this topic as well as participate in the other lessons to get more ideas on how to present this information. I want to introduce one last activity that I enjoyed from this week, this is the Tarsia puzzle that teachers can make online. This concept allows teachers to use different math questions and have students try to solve the problems correctly to create a shape. Below, as you can see we were close but not close enough. We did not end up completing it but it was definitely motivating and I can definitely see myself creating a puzzle for my lessons in the future!

Until next time, Happy Thanksgiving!!