Blog Post #3 - Week 5

Hi everyone!!! Thanks so much for returning to my blog this week! I am excited to share my thoughts on several different topics that we discussed in lecture and saw in our course material over the last two weeks! Let’s get started!

This week in class we focused much of our attention on fractions and decimals and I learned a lot from what we covered. A really impactful moment for me was when we discussed the importance and necessity of visualization in these topics of mathematics. Visualization of fractions is needed for students to understand the concept behind them. As educators, our goal is to teach students math concepts so that they can apply them in authentic situations, and I have learned that visualization is a key technique for achieving this with fractions. I now understand the reasoning and value behind all the pizza and pie fraction problems I solved as a student and why we still use them to teach fractions with students today. Fraction problems with a pizza allow students to visualize how fractions are relevant to their lives and give them a representation of the values that fractions represent. This realization encouraged me to think deeper about visualization and decimals. Decimals and fractions are related and intertwined, and yet as a student, I always struggled more with understanding decimals. I now wonder if this is because I did not have the opportunity to visualize the values of decimals as I did with fractions! I will look into techniques and examples I could use to help students visualize with decimal numbers.

The talk of visualization brought my mind to thinking about manipulatives once again. I know I discussed manipulatives and how they can sometimes distract students in my introductory blog post, so I won’t spend too much time on the subject here. However, in this context, I felt it was important to share that manipulatives can be an excellent tool to help students visualize mathematical concepts and thus improve their comprehension. Manipulatives can serve as real, tangible representations that help allow students to see math concepts in practical concepts. For that reason, I do believe that manipulatives can be useful and valuable tools to students, but they must be implemented correctly to remain effective. Below are two examples of manipulative use for fractions!

Alycia Zimmerman. Lego Fractions. Scholastic. Accessed October 4, 2019.  https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/alycia-zimmerman/using-lego-build-math-concepts/

Nasha Bailey. Pizza Manipulative. Pinterest. Accessed October 4, 2019. https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/387520742917896416/?lp=true

The last notion that I wanted to touch on in this blog post was the potential for intersectionality between math and other subjects and the potential that this has to create meaningful, authentic tasks for students. This thought process was sparked by a teacher candidate in my class who did an amazing presentation on how we could teach fractions through music. What I have come to realize after this presentation is that by connecting math to other subjects, we can not only make math more interesting and engaging for students, but it can help students succeed in math by tying in other strength areas. I am curious to look into more connections between math and other subjects!

Thank you so much for reading!! See you next time!