Hi everyone!! It is such a pleasure to have you all back and
visiting my math blog again this week! This blog post is a little later than
the typical ones because I had reading week fall in the middle of this blog
duration, but it is so great to be back at it!
There were a few very interesting things that we covered in
class the last few weeks that I am very excited to discuss and share with you
now. The first of which is an interesting discussion that forced me to reflect
further about dispelling mathematical myths or misconceptions that our students
believe. A math myth might be a belief like “two negatives make a positive”
that a student holds which is in fact not always true. For more examples of
misconceptions in math check out this article that describes common misconceptions that students have about fractions! Now when I first thought
about myths in math, the first thought that came to my mind is that it is
important to prevent students from getting in the habit of believing them in the
first place. While this is certainly an effective strategy, our class
discussion forced me to think more critically because it was mentioned that you
do not get to control what knowledge students bring with them when they enter
your class and so they might already believe some math misconceptions. When
this is the case it becomes much harder to dispel something that a student has
already learned and believes to be true. When this is the case, I believe that
it is best to show your students comprehensive examples that dispel the mathematical
misconception that they hold.
I really loved having the opportunity in class to practice
demonstrating to students that the math myth “two negatives make a positive” is
not always true. My group was responsible for disproving the math myth for
multiplication and division operations using a number line. At first, I found
this activity very challenging, but with discussions with my fellow teacher
candidates and professor, we were able to successfully represent both examples
on a number line and I can say that I am confident in my ability to explain
them to a student in the future! Using a number line in this situation really
forced me to think things through and reflect on how I could explain and
represent them clearly rather than just making a statement like “if you divide
two negative numbers, the quotient is always a positive number”. A statement
like that would most likely be met with resistance from a student who believes
two negatives always make a positive no matter what, but now I can actually prove
why to them. This activity has made me more confident in my ability to teach math
and dispel math misconceptions.
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| Math is Fun. Multiplying Negatives. mathisfun.com. Accessed October 27, 2019. https://www.mathsisfun.com/multiplying-negatives.html |
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| Khan Academy. Dividing Negative Numbers Review. khanacademy.org. Accessed October 27, 2019.https://www.khanacademy.org/math/arithmetic/arith-review-negative-numbers/arith-review-mult-divide-negatives/a/dividing-negative-numbers-review |
Lastly, I just wanted to add that the activity above and
other course content over the past weeks has really let me see the importance
of being able to answer student questions in a way that makes sense with an
appropriate explanation. If you simply say “you have to do it this way because that’s
how it works” or “that’s just how it’s done”, I now understand that you will be
met with resistance from students and you will not be doing them a good
service. A math teacher needs to be able to prove and explain the reasoning to
student questions to be successful and this is something that I am looking
forward to learning much more about in the future!
Thank you so much for reading! I will see you in two weeks!
