Roy Outred

EDMA241 Blog Week 11

The handball court and the playground are two things that almost every school has. Because of this reason I chose them as the stimuli to some open ended questions that would get the students thinking about measurement and space. Not only would an image like this allow students to observe and think but and activity could allow the children to go outside and extend their learning in their physical environment. Open-ended questions are a good tool in encouraging mathematical thinking and improve problem-solving skills. Not only are open-ended questions ones with multiple answers but they “offer students multiple approaches to the problem by placing little constraint on students’ methods of solution.”(Hancock, 1995) This means that the questions allow children to think outside the box and approach an answer at different angles. With that in mind my first open-ended question is: Explain how you would go about making room for one more court on the playground. This question is designed to get children thinking about space and creating more space for another court. Students may present answer that talk about how they could measure, resize the courts, shift the courts around or extend the playground. The second open-ended question is: Find ways to redesign the court so you can fit as many as possible inside the classroom. This question asks the students to begin thinking about another area and possibly changing the shape of the court so it could fit inside a classroom. The children would need to measure and/or visualize the handball courts inside the classroom they are sitting in. My third question is: If we were to cover the court in tiles how many tiles would we need to cover the whole thing. This question comes with the presenting of three differently shaped and sized tiles that the children can decide which ones to use and how to use them. Thoughts such as the space between each tile or overlapping may become apparent to the children.

  Hancock, C. L. (1995). Enhancing mathematics learning with open-ended questions. 

The Mathematics Teacher

, 

88

-        Base 10 Class pack, 805 pieces ($89) – These are standard materials that should be included in every classroom. Base 10 materials are of upmost importance in allowing kids to discover the relationship between ones, tens, hundreds and thousands etc. Using this in the classroom would occur a lot in helping children to work out answers to problems. They can use the materials to work out answers to questions such as 67+44. A child would naturally struggle at this as the question asks them to go over the century and over the decade. Using the base ten materials they can easily visualize what is happening to help them work it out.

-        Bucket of big wooden beads, 400 beads ($62) – These beads are coloured in rows of 10 and line up along a string so they can be moved and counted like an abacus. The beads help children with basic counting skills, identifying patterns and the friends to ten concept. An activity that some younger years could use are dividing the 10 beads into two and learning each friends to ten by adding and subtracting beads to their line. Children may extend this activity by adding the next coloured beads and learning about numbers above ten.

Matific is an online learning and teaching tool for children in years kindergarten to 6. The website includes many interactive games designed based on subject and stage difficulty. From research and a quick trial of some of the games it is clear to see that students could benefit greatly from using this platform. Firstly the style of games and activities would keep students engaged and encourage them to want to come back for more. It is education masked as games. The layout of the activities for teachers by year group and subject make it very easy for them to implement Matific into any lesson. Another aspect of Matific is that it is based online so a mathematics lesson could be mixed with a technology lesson by using computers or other resources during the lesson. Not only could the website be used during class as an extra activity but children could access it from home and extend their learning even further during homework time. Being that children would be eager to access these games it would be a good idea for teachers to use Matific as a reward for finishing the main mathematics lesson, therefore motivating the students while at the same time extending their knowledge by allowing them to continue mathematics. Teachers are also able to “set personalised work for each student, group or class.” (Matific, 2018) This means that teachers are able to accommodate for every individual student and their needs. So if a student is excelling at a particular subject whilst another struggles the teacher can set up relevant tasks for them to complete on Matific to either extend or bring them up to speed.

EDMA241 Blog Week 7

This activity is an example of a warm up game that may help students prepare their mental computation for a mathematics lesson. The game is a simple one that puts the students in pairs or groups of up to 4 in competition with each other. The game is designed for a stage 2 class as it features addition above 10 and up to 40 of at times multiple numbers. The game requires everyone in the group to place a card down in front of them, the first person to announce the total amount of adding all cards receives the cards. The player with the most cards at the end is the winner. The game can vary in difficulty depending on the amount of group members so it is easy to differentiate. Some answers that children may provide are obviously correct by using the right mental computation techniques in the quick addition. Some children may find they are using the wrong mental techniques or try to hard to rush and give an answer that is 1 up or 1 down from the correct answer. Mental computation is an important skill to learn for developing mathematics students. "It is an important skill because it enables children to learn more deeply how numbers work, make decisions about procedures, and create strategies for calculating." (Heirdsfield, 2011) As it is pointed out mental computation is a skill that underlines all mathematical aspects and develops overall ability.

Week 6 was the beginning of Student Professional Experience and the first taste of Mathematics being taught in a classroom setting. I did not start teaching for this lesson however I observed and helped out in some group work on a lesson about time. There were many different clocks around the classroom for students to manipulate and help them understand. There were also games such as time bingo to be used as an activity. My mentor teacher had created 4 groups out of his class based on their levels. Each group takes it in turn every math’s lesson to work on a different activity to do with time. This ensures that each group gets differentiated and can work together on their own level. My mentor teacher took one group to work with them exclusively whilst I was assigned to help a group playing time-based bingo. This variation makes it easier to differentiate the children’s learning and get them to collaborate with each other to further advance their learning. Differentiation is defined as “ways in which teachers take into account in their planning and teaching the differences between pupils in the class.” (Haylock, 2007). From the mixed year groups and programing I could observe from my mentor teacher it is obvious that his technique goes a long way in the process of differentiating students. The NSW syllabus highlights an outcome (Mae-2WM) that involves the use of “objects, actions, technology and/or trial and error to explore mathematical problems” (NESA, 2018). This outcome can be seen being reached in many ways through the vast amount of concrete materials such as clocks with moveable hands to help the kids discover and practice their knowledge of time.

 Haylock, D. (2007). Key concepts in teaching primary mathematics. Sage.

A staff mathematics meeting would require everyone involved taking a lesson from to use in his or her classrooms. The goal being setting up and managing mathematical learning experiences 10 things I would include to point out would be:

1.     Question the children constantly rather than give them answers

2.     Design different ways of letting the children go about the lesson for flexibility

3.     Structure teaching of concepts around problems to be solved

4.     Understand the zone of proximal development to challenge students but allow for growth

5.     Be positive about the subject and reinforce that everyone can have success in mathematics with effort

6.     Focus lessons on one topic to allow students to tackle mathematics one step at a time

7.     Make real life connections by giving word problems that they can relate to so they can visualize their working out

8.     Ask students to explain their working out so the teacher knows that they are using the right mathematical thinking proficiencies

9.     Encourage group work and the sharing of ideas between students for better growth

10.   Use a vast amount of concrete materials when doing any mathematical concept

EDMA241 Week 4 Blog

This is my own designed visual that represents the 5 main working mathematically proficiencies. These proficiencies are the types of thinking that is involved in maths and to master them is to master mathematics. To showcase them in a visual I decided to write them inside an image that represents what they are. Communication is inside a speech bubble, problem solving inside a thought bubble, reasoning inside some footsteps showing how to reason with a question is to handle it step by step, fluency is drawn in a fluid way and understanding written inside a light bulb. The mathematical proficiencies were developed as a means for teachers to understand how their students are thinking and working out problems so they can in turn teach the individual students in a personal way. It gives the teacher a better grip of their classroom and helps them make decisions based around their lesson or when they are attending to individual children. My visual can serve as a reminder to the teacher in a classroom to consider the proficiencies and consider each child’s needs in their classroom.

NSW, B. (2018). Mathematics K–10 :: Organisation of content. [online] Syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au. Available at: http://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/mathematics/mathematics-k10/content-k10/ [Accessed 28 Mar. 2018].

Mathematics as a subject in school has long been associated with boredom and difficulty. It’s this attitude that challenges teachers of mathematics the most. To be able to instil in a child that they can do something if they put the effort in and try to get their head around it. The NSW syllabus on maths is set out and organised in a way that makes the topics easy to access and easy to understand for teachers. This helps them conduct better lessons and think more about their pedagogical approach to the lesson so that mathematics becomes easier and less of a bore for students in the classroom. Peter Sullivan is an educational theorist who came up with one pedagogical approach, which he believes will also benefit students to learn more. The technique is called launch, explore, and consolidate. The three part technique is based around the idea that the first thing a teacher should do when introducing a topic is challenging the children first and allowing them to explore the topic themselves. So instead of the teacher telling the student what and how to do something a student is allowed to find their own means of technique for their own benefit.

NSW, B. (2018). Mathematics K–10 :: Organisation of content. [online] Syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au. Available at: http://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/mathematics/mathematics-k10/content-k10/ [Accessed 28 Mar. 2018].

BLOG #4

To tweet or not to tweet – that is the question. Week 3’s driving question introduced us to using social media as a platform to further our studies and our career. The driving question tells us that in some cases a professional online profile is a good thing to have, as many employers will look at these profiles when hiring. So when there is a questionable post you are thinking about putting out there its better to leave it. In my opinion not only is having a twitter account great for reaching out to people in your field but you must assure the profile of yourself is appropriate and inviting for employers.

Twitter is a social media platform where anyone can create an account and post their opinions, connect with like-minded people or share links of interesting websites to followers. If a primary education student was to go onto twitter seeking information about teaching to better their studies there are many groups and people to connect to that can help in that department. This is also why a professional online profile is useful. A Huffington Post article talks about how to utilize twitter when job searching. It states that following, retweeting and putting yourself out there to companies can be beneficial for an employee. This week also introduced us to Personal Learning Networks (PLN), which is networks such as twitter in which personal growth, and knowledge could be obtained. So not only can twitter be useful in obtaining a job but can also be a platform for improving in your field. To start us off on this PLN journey we were each given the task of creating our own personal twitter, follow some active educators and tweet ourselves in a professional manner.

In The Educators Guide to Twitter article, Twitter is talked about being beneficial for students as it, “provides students with opportunities to learn important skills, such as collaboration, responsiveness, and the ability to join different discourses.” It made me think that whilst social media can be a distraction in the classroom it could be helpful to teach students how to utilize it productively.

From the start of our game design to now we are realizing more and more what we can do with the program scratch. As we test the gameplay capacity we have tweaked some aspects of our game. Rather than the cooperation aspect of our game being one user controls the gun and the other the movement, we’ve found that a up and down with a left to right movement system works better and is a more unique cooperation experience as it requires more communication.

Briggs, S. (2015). The Educator's Guide to Twitter (Tools, Tips and Hashtags) - InformED. [online] InformED. Available at: http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/twitter-in-education/ [Accessed 6 Oct. 2017].

BLOG #3

Is there more to online games than fun? Online games are an extremely popular market and are mostly sold based on their aspects of fun that people can have playing them.  However there can be more to online games than just fun.  Online games can connect people from all around the world and connect friends with each other. This makes the games very social activities, which encourages fairness, cooperation and the development of social skills. It is quite effective as many games call for the players to communicate and cooperate in order to complete a level or achieve a goal. There are even sometimes educational aspects to online games depending on specific examples. The fun acts as a platform for kids to want to engage in an educational and skill developing activity.

BLOG #2

To tweet or not to tweet – that is the question. Week 3’s driving question introduced us to using social media as a platform to further our studies and our career. The driving question tells us that in some cases a professional online profile is a good thing to have, as many employers will look at these profiles when hiring. So when there is a questionable post you are thinking about putting out there its better to leave it.

 This week also introduced us to Personal Learning Networks (PLN), which is networks such as twitter in which personal growth, and knowledge could be obtained. If a primary education student was to go onto twitter seeking information about teaching to better their studies there are many groups and people to connect to that can help in that department. This is also why a professional online profile is useful. To start us off on this PLN journey we were each given the task of creating our own personal twitter, follow some active educators and tweet ourselves in a professional manner.

BLOG #1

The purpose of this blog is to reflect upon the teachings in COMM140 and how the driving questions we discuss each week help with our assessment task. The more we understand about the digital revolution and the way it affects young people, the better our game design and ideas will be when we consider this.

 Digital natives and digital immigrants exist and in different forms. The younger a child is today the less they understand about technology used previous to them. These young people have grown up in the digital age and are exceeding far greater with using technology than the older digital immigrants. The immigrants are labelled as so because they are learning to process the digital age a rethink the way they attain information.

 It is important to understand this concept in terms of education. Most teachers are digital immigrants and have grown up learning in different ways, therefore they must put away their pride in a sense and teach children to live in the new world, which as we can all see heavily features technology.

 Marc Prensky’s book On The Horizen talks about the terms digital native and immigrant and how immigrants struggle to pick up the skills required in the digital age because of all the information and skills they’ve learnt previously. “…The single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.” He goes on to state the problem that these struggling digital immigrants are actually having in the education system.

 All the work contained within this blog is my own, except where appropriately referenced.

 Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants part 1. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy2.acu.edu.au/docview/214629645?accountid=8194