Blog Post #4 - Week 7

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.

Math is Fun. Multiplying Negatives. mathisfun.com. Accessed October 27, 2019. https://www.mathsisfun.com/multiplying-negatives.html

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!