The Life of Measurement

It is coming to the end of the term now and I can officially say that I have learned a lot during my time in Mathematics. I have had the opportunity to learn new and fun was of teaching math and that makes me very happy because I feel like my school experience in math was for the most part, taught right from the text book. I am looking forward to what the last few weeks of class will bring.

In class this week we focused on the topic of measurement.  I can recall that I was not particularly fond of this subject area when I was younger but I think that I failed to realize its relevance and importance in everyday life. We can use tools to measure length, area, perimeter, weight, volume, temperature, and even time in our everyday lives.

The textbook does a great example of providing students with everyday examples to help guide their understanding of measurement. I think this is extremely important for our students because often, If we can not relate mathematics to something useful in our lives, then we easily loose interest in the subject matter. A great example from the textbook is using your fingers to measure something.  Such as, “My finger is 1 cm wide, so this string must be 1,2,3,4,5 cm long”. Children often do this without even realizing that they are engaging in a mathematical process. Which, is why it is important for us as teachers to remind our students of the mathematical processes that they take part in on a regular basis.

I think that it is also important for us to stress the metric system within our classroom. I think that there is a major confusion with our students because they are often exposed to using the imperial system when we are told to us the metric in Canada.  It can be beneficial to be knowledgeable of both systems but why confuse our students when the mathematical curriculum is based on the metric system?

This week one of our classmates did their learning activity presentation using a technological example. Christian presented his information to the classroom using Kahoot! as a strategy to engage the students. I found this activity to be fun and it allowed for us to collaborate among our peers to work together and come up with solutions. As a teacher, I can see myself using an activity like this in my classroom as a minds on, to get my students thinking about the particular topic and engaged with their peers so that they can bounce ideas off of each other and work collaboratively to come up with different solutions to problems.

With a few weeks left of class, I am eager to use the strategies that I have learned thus far, during mathematics in my placement. I am now much more confident in my mathematical abilities then I was before this class and I look forward to showing what I have learned to my students