During our math modules this week, we explored the lesson that you can't have success without making mistakes along the way. When you make mistakes in math your brain grows. This made me think of having challenges in my own math class.  If I can embrace the mistakes and struggle, it will help change my mindset so I believe I will figure it out. 


This week in our math class, we started with an icebreaker called "I have, Who Has?" This game included everyone in the class and created engagement for all. The game is made to challenge students and their mental math skills. This game also give teachers a diagnostic assessment of the class. This game is designed to ensure each participant is actively listening all while keeping you interested to see if your answer is next. I would definitely use this game as a refresher or as a review before quizzes or to make sure we can move on to the next concept. While playing the game, I thought about the learners who might be stressed or anxious playing the game so quickly, so you can definitely modify the same to put student in smaller same ability groups so they feel more comfortable. 


If you're interested in a copy of the game to use for your class, you can find it here

We also completed different quizzed today to determine what kind of learner we most identified with.
The quizzes we completed can be found here.

I believe it is important that we encourage students to understand for themselves their own learning style, either auditory, visual, or kinaesthetic. However we did discuss today as a class that educators shouldn't give their students the idea to label themselves to one learning style specifically. If students are labelling themselves as a certain learner, they might unknowingly be limiting themselves to the possibilities that each learning style offers them.  Educators need to be constantly encouraging their students to different experiences of learning.


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Learning styles have the potential to reach all learners. It fosters positive growth mindsets and differentiates using content (various delivery methods), process (understanding content) and product (learning artifacts/evidence)

Until next week! :)

Every week for our online component of our mathematics class, we are required to watch a module on a designated topic and post our ideas and thoughts afterwards about it. This weeks topic was about Math Mindset and the ideas we create when we have negative feelings towards a subject, in this case Mathematics.

Retrieved from: http://bit.ly/2wqtxfp

I feel as if the math gods above knew I needed to watch these videos, because I learned an important lesson this week.

This week in class, our professor showed us another card trick and had placed us in groups to work together to solve the trick. The card trick brought us into a discussion about factoring which in a simple term is finding what to multiply together to get an expression.

I am a visual learner, but as our teacher was attempting to go through the algebraic expression, I became very frustrated and confused.  I was getting overwhelmed with the numbers and letters that needed to work together in order to solve the equation and I gave up.

My teacher must have sensed that I was upset, because she looked at me and asked me if I understood and you know what I said?

"NO, I don't understand. I am not a math person!!"


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I couldn't believe that sentence came out of my mouth after we just had a wonderful discussion the week before about how we are all capable math learners and no one is born "being/not being a math person."
I felt like a chump. I knew I disappointed my professor and I instantly felt awful.

That night, I went home to complete my module and I decided to pick this video to watch:


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This week in mathematics, we started the class playing a card game.

Our teacher had a student cut a deck of cards in half, and then again two more times so there were four equal piles. In each pile she had the student take three cards from the top and place them at the bottom of the deck. Next, she had the student take three more cards from the same pile and place one card on each of the 3 remaining piles that weren't touched yet.

This same process happened for the 3 remaining piles of cards. When finished, our teacher lifted up the top card from each pile revealing that each pile had the same card on top!

Crazy right!?


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After being placed in groups, we had a chance to try this card trick. During the process of trying to figure out how she did it, our teacher made a comment stating that it was "easy". Many of us overlooked this comment which in the end taught us an important lesson on we should be speaking to our students in a mathematics class.

As we were figuring out the card trick, I personally found myself getting frustrated when other groups were figuring out the process faster than I was. This got me thinking of when I have the opportunity to teach my own class and the negative impact a student would have if I told them something was "easy" when in reality it might not be for them.

This lesson helped me understand that as an educator, I need to choose my words carefully especially with children and the concept of mathematics. When students come to me with a math question or concern, I need to remember not to say "oh, this is easy", but instead focus the conversation towards " I see how this is difficult, lets work through it together and come to an understanding of this problem."




The Power of 'Yet'


We also played a game called: A game about squares that you can find by clicking this link.
This game had no instructions so you had to use trial and error to move onto the next level. The ability to visualize your steps in the game also really helped because it took out the guessing game that could really frustrate students and stop them from moving forward and continuing the game. The ability to make mistakes is accepted in this game and not feared, which is a key factor when introducing anything new to students.

We also watched some videos regarding math mindsets and I found myself gravitating towards one in particular that you can watch here:





Until next week! :)