Sunday, November 24, 2013

C4T #4

For this C4T assignment I was given the chance to read David Wees' blog. He writes about mathematics in schools and for children. I find all of his posts very interesting.

The first post of his that I read is titled "Why Teach Math?". This instantly caught my attention. In this post he asked why schools taught math to every student, even though many would not need this skill.

My comment was: This is a very interesting post. I have always wanted to know why I had to learn math. I am currently studying Elementary Education and have absolutely no use for algebra or calculus. This is a very interesting way of answering that question. Having math taught in schools so that students could gain a different understanding of the world seems probable. The one point that I can see as extremely important in math is problem-solving skills. This is always helpful and is found in every grade level's math class. A third advantage to students learning math that you did not mention is simply for them to be well-rounded individuals. I'm not sure this is a real reason, but it was something my school always stressed. This was a very interesting blog post and helped me to be able to finally think of an answer to that question.



The second post of his that I read is titled "Learning About Shape". This was a very interesting post. He describes how his 20 month old son is learning to match shapes in a puzzle. He explains how his son went from guessing to looking at each shape to match it to the correct hole.

My comment was: This is extremely interesting. I have seen many children play with this type of puzzle and only seem to be able to match certain shapes, but then not understand at all to recognize a circle or square somewhere else, like your son. Your last comment is extremely interesting. You said, "It makes me wonder what concepts my students may not have fully developed, even by the time they arrived to me in high school." This is very troubling and true. I personally know that I could not always use information from one area in a different area, even though it is the exact same concept. As an elementary education major I find this fascinating and worrisome because many students, especially young children, would seem to have this problem.

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