Welcome back to my blog!
In this week's blog, I will explore and reflect upon what I learned about this week in class, outside of class and through the assignment. This week we were given a classroom activity where we were provided sheets with various ways to solve addition, subtraction, multiplication and division questions. I learned that it does not matter what strategy I use in my future classrooms to help students add, subtract, multiple and divide; it only matters that the students begin developing a conceptual understanding. This means that students have an integrated and functional grasp of the basic mathematical ideas. I learned that the more ways that a student comprehends how to solve a problem, the more likely they are to have a conceptual understanding. This will be useful to me because now I am aware of how beneficial it is to teach students to solve problems multiple ways. Therefore in my future classrooms, I will make sure to educate my students of the numerous ways to solve math problems. I connected this to the Problem Solving Activity, because in the assignment I was instructed to solve the problems in more than one way, and know I understand why I was told to do so.
However, a question I still have about this is that even though I would be teaching my students to solve problems in various ways, would I ask them to only solve a problem on a test in one specific way, or would they be allowed to solve the problem any way they want? For example, would I say "only solve this problem using the speed mathematics simplified method?" or would I say "solve this problem using any method you like?"
My favourite part of the week was doing the activity in class where we were looking at the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division sheets. We were instructed to try and figure out how to use the four methods to solve problems on each of the sheets provided. This really deepened my understanding because I was unaware that half of the methods to solve problems even existed.
The area that I feel that I made the biggest improvement in was learning about instrumental and relational understanding. Instrumental understanding is knowing how to solve a problem and then applying the rule. Relational understanding is knowing and applying the rule while also knowing how it connects to the real world and why the question is being asked. At first, I was a little bit confused with these terms and could not differentiate them. As the terms were discussed more in class and I watched the video, I began to increase my understanding and improve my knowledge on the topic.
As I went through the definitions and watched the video in class, I connected this content from my learning this week to my learning in the past. I have determined that I was taught mathematics using the instrumental understanding approach. When I was in elementary school, I could perform calculations and apply procedures, but I did not understand the mathematics behind the rules and procedures. If I was taught by relational understanding, I believe I would be more likely to remember to procedures because I would actually understand why to use certain processes at certain times and connect previous learning to new learning.
Overall, this week allowed me to see that there are different ways to teach students and how it is advantageous to be aware of this as a future educator. Talk soon!
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