Singapore has become one country where their education system is very comprehensive and many changes to it. Especially Mathematics, it is interesting to know Singapore students perform well in Math to be compared to students in US.
During my primary school that was 30 years ago it is much easier and straight forward than I compare it now. Currently, children cannot do mathematics without understanding it whereas during my time the problem sums is so straight forward. I can still remember the clue to solve maths problem sum is to find the word “altogether” and “left” to determine whether it is an addition or subtraction problem. Today children learn by trial and error and they need language to understand mathematics. As a teacher of mathematics we need to understand our student as quoted in Chapter 1 page 2, “Effective mathematics teaching requires understanding what students know and need to learn and then challenging and supporting them to learn it well (NCTM,2000,p.16). Thus we need a reflective Mathematic teacher.
I agree with the sentence in chapter 1 page 10, where teacher use different strategy such as asking children, “Did anyone solve it differently”? This is effective teaching as we can learn new things from our children. Learning takes place anywhere, everywhere and with anyone and everyone.
In Chapter 2, the discussion is about children become “doers” of mathematics. Children learn from “making sense” and “figuring out”. They were given opportunities to actively think on the mathematics problem. As I reflect, children do best in hands-on activity they are the “doers” and they understand it better when they experience it by themselves and see it. This learning through hands-on activity has been proved effective.
When students know that struggle is expected as part of the process of doing mathematics, they embrace the struggle and feel success when they reach a solution (Carter, 2008). I fully agree to this quote and it is so true. I experience it myself, whenever I have to tutor my sons and daughter for their maths homework and I manage to solve it I feel the success.
As I read on I began to understand that learning theories might be thought of as tools or lenses for interpreting how a person learns (Simon,2009). For example constructivism might be the best tool, or lens, for thinking about how a student might internalize an idea while the sociocultural theory might be better tool for analyzing influence of the social/cultural aspects of the classroom.
I am looking forward to class to learn more on the mathematics curricula and strategies. Identify socia/cultural influences on learning and teaching mathematics.
No comments:
Post a Comment