I started another class this week. It’s a part 1 of the math for elementary schools teachers’ series. I have my schedule very tightly mapped out so that I can get in the 2010 registration for the NLU School of Education, however if I could go back in time I think I would have planned this differently. I only have two courses right now, but they both are in accelerated format because the summer term is only 8 weeks long, rather than the 16 weeks of the fall and winter term. Plus, they don’t offer the math courses at any time when I am able to attend a traditional classroom class, so I had to sign up for Independent Study. I think it would be fine except, whoops! Didn’t know that the only times the teacher is available for guidance during hours that I am not at work happen to be the two nights that I am at my other class. And, there are only two evenings that I can take tests on because of my other class. Unfortunately they don’t give you this information until orientation so it was a bit of a shocker to me. I’m feeling very nervous now.
I am very capable of doing well in math, however it doesn’t come naturally and I have to work very hard at it. It’s too late now to change my schedule so I just have to push through.
When I was doing my placement tests, I was able to refresh my memory on algebra and geometry through the use of several fantastic websites that are available (yet another reason why I love, love, love! the internet.) But I can’t seem to find anything quite appropriate for teaching me how to think like a mathematician. Most of what I am learning is logic and problem solving technique. Once I see how the problem was worked out, it makes perfect sense, but I know that I wouldn’t have come up with that method on my own. I would have re-read and pondered the question until my brain hurt, then started guessing for a half hour until I got an answer that worked. Obviously, I am going to have to learn some better methods to teach my students or they will be a very confused, so I think that this class will be good for me, but I really wish I had planned it better so that I had more time for this first course. Oh well. Now I have to come up ways to help me think like a mathematician. I’m trying to ask myself how I might help students with understanding and approaching word problems. Here are some thoughts I’ve had on this:
A. Use a worksheet format: create a work sheet where each step is broken down and there are questions to guide the student, and spaces to help organize the information in a functional and visual manner.
B. Use manipulatives to help the student visually organize information.
C. Breakdown the word problem word by word, to help identify what the important information is, then deal with each piece of information separately, such as identifying what is unique and can be said about that individual segment. Then determine which techniques can utilize those uniqueness’.
D. Make more complicated word problems easier by substituting the subject with something more relatable to the students to help them grasp the idea (the same way people often use the pizza analogy when dealing with fractions.)
E. Draw pictures that are memorable & meaningful to represent variables (rather than letters).
So my plan, as I am trying to work through the problems for my course, is to use some of these techniques for myself and see if they help. Hopefully I can make it through this term, right now I am feeling the weight of everything. My own fault, though, for not taking care of this when I was young and didn’t have to work or pay bills!
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