I enjoyed the Kelton & Ma (2018) reading this week as it described a really interesting activity that I am going to take up in my classroom. I think this course has given me a ton of very simple activities to do in my classroom that connect with concepts, and I've really enjoyed that about the readings. The article focuses on a teacher who went away from the traditional math classroom and used the Whole & Half activity as a powerful way to learn about fractions. The activity required students to physically position themselves and engage in hand movements creating a new arrangement of their bodies in relation to each other and the environment. This use of space allowed students movements to become integral to their math understanding.
My first stop in the article was that the teacher had the students physically doing math, rather than learning math. This movement allowed them to explore fractional relationships through bodily movements and get creative with the physical space they occupied.
At one point the article talks about Katie and Claire, who had trouble with the coordination of their bodies and Claire had to wait for Katie to become half. This breakdown (and I'm sure there were others) demonstrated some of the challenges of working with other people. I enjoyed reading about this case study because we are just about to start fractions in our classroom so I would be curious to try it in my classroom to see how the students do with it.
A question to ponder: How might activities like "Whole and Half" reshape the traditional classroom setting and give students a new perspective on how math is "done" and how one "does" math? Would students make the deep connections necessary or would they think it's just a fun movement activity. What can you do as a teacher to ensure the conceptual understanding hits home?
In response to your question: I think the beauty in the activities we have been learning about and trying ourselves is that it doesn't feel like math so while I think the kids would think it's just a fun movement activity I think they would unintentionally be gaining a deeper understanding even if at first they don't realize it! Obviously this is relative to the kid that is also completing the activity but I think not over complicating the activities and just continuing to relate them back to the math concept is enough to hit the conceptual understanding.
ReplyDeleteI think activities that reshape our classroom are vital in changing students perspectives on mathematics. Being a primary teacher, I was shocked at the beginning of the school year when I had students coming into my grade 1/2 class who were already making comments about how they did not like math class. The activities that we have been doing in this course has definitely changed the perspectives of my students in this regard. I do think it is important to be meaningful in how we are connecting these experiences within our teaching to math notion, etc. to ensure that the connection between the two is clear.
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