YouTube? No, YouCubed!! An awesome resource for math teachers

Have you ever heard of the website YouCubed? Well, if you will ever have to teach math in a classroom or have to help a child with their math homework, this site will be of great help. YouCubed is a nonprofit organization and is a free resource for K-12 that offers free and low priced resources for everything mathematical. Even the name is appealing for me because if I was going to research how to figure out something on Google, I usually look for the first link that brings me to YouTube if possible so that I can see it explained or demonstrated by someone. It only makes sense to find videos that will help teachers teach math. I think this is a wonderful resource for all teachers, a few of the videos that I have watched so far really stress the importance of getting our students' minds active and thinking, these videos show examples and give suggestions on how we can practice this approach in our own classrooms. Personally I find that videos are more effective to explain things because I am a visual learner and I need to see how problems are solved visually rather than just verbally explained or written in words. This website has a lot of very helpful videos for people who are visual learners, like me and for everyone really. I found this website to be user friendly and easy to navigate through in order to sift through the content to find what you are looking for. While browsing through some of the videos I found one that talked about a six year old boy which really surprised me. this boy came home from school and told his mother that he did not enjoy his math class that day and when she asked why he said:

 "math is too much answer time and not enough learning time." 

This is a very true statement and it was very surprising to me that it came from a six year old child. This statement alone underlines the problem we have with math in our schools today, the problems given are mainly about finding the 'right' answer and making sure it matches the one that everyone else has but less attention is paid to the process the person took to solve the problem. There are many ways to solving a problem and if we all come to the same answer in the end, who's to say which on is the 'right' answer? 

I believe that math should be more about exploring the problems we are given, not to find the correct answer but to find many answers and we must then convince ourselves which one is the correct answer. We learn from our failures and mistakes so that we can do better next time and math should be about taking risks and trying many ways to solve a problem. 

It is important to see the many different ways that your students think in order to solve a particular problem. Number talks are a great way to see how students reach solutions to problems and you could then represent each students solution visually on the board to illustrate how many different ways there are to solve even a conventional problem because everyone's brain works differently. One of the videos talks about how she would start each math class with a number talk and she would always be surprised with the number of different ways that students solved the problem. This is a great idea that I would definitely bring into my own classroom; it is interactive, fun and engaging for students and together we further see and understand how there are many solutions to a problem. 

I remember being very frustrated and overwhelmed during math classes. I always though that I was no good at math and even the thought of it having to teach it to a class scared me to my very core. I am still not a confident person when it comes to math and I think most of this fear and intimidation stems from some very bad experiences with math at a young age. Over the years there have been teachers that have impacted me and helped me feel more confident about teaching math someday but it is helpful to know that there are so many great resources out there, such as this one, to fall back on if I am not feeling confident and need a little help. 

"...Throughout my schooling years, I had enough "bad" experiences with math that I was left feeling stupid and incapable of doing it...

I cannot tell you the relief I know have that I can learn math myself,and I can teach students that they can too..."

Middle School Teacher  

(taken from YouCubed)

I hope that someday I can be a confident math teacher and that I will no longer feel intimidated by mathematics. 

What is Mathematics Anyway?

When I ponder about the question, what is mathematics? a lot of things run thought my mind. Mathematics is a way of thinking; it is using logics and calculations to solve a problem and I cannot imagine our world without mathematics. We use mathematics in our everyday lives to understand and solve problems, when we go to the grocery store we use math to estimate the amount of money the bill will be and by knowing that we can only spent a certain amount we can better manage our money. Mathematics is in the kitchen when we are baking and cooking, to follow a recipe we use measurements to know how much of each ingredient to use. Mathematics is a way of communicating, through money, through time, through measurements, and the list goes on but we learn at a young age that there are set units that represent time or money or distance and so on and that these units are the same for everyone and by using them to represent a certain amount we can more efficiently communicate what something is so that everyone can understand it in the same way. For example, one hour represents sixty minutes and one minute represents sixty seconds and one hour is communicated as the same amount of time to one person as it is to another, therefore by saying "I will be leaving in one hour" the person receiving this message communicates one hour to be the same amount of allotted time as the person who is sending the message. Mathematics can define many things in our world and without mathematics we would be very uncertain and misunderstood because mathematics is a tool to understanding each other.

In search of the definition of mathematics I read many things but did not seek the answer I was in search of, instead I became more confused. Mathematics is something humans have created, just like literacy, it is now essential to our everyday world and we use mathematics without even know that we are doing so. mathematics is a very difficult thing to define but I think mathematics is anything you want it to be, in class we wrote dozens of words in hope to define the ambiguous term: mathematics. One word that stuck with me was that mathematics is an art, this is a very accurate way to think of mathematics for me because I can realte to art. Just as people connect with are differently, the same applies to how people connct with mathematics differently. Everything is art, the way we dress, the designs our footprints make in the snow, the art of cooking, the art of mechanics and I could go on forever, but if mathematics is a form of art than anything goes! We can all interpret its definition and the way we connect with it differently and therefore mathemtics becomes a personal connection and no two people will experience it in the same way.

Why show Sir Ken Robinson's video in a math class?

Sir Ken Robinson's video, 'do schools kill creativity?' was a great video to show in a math class of future educators. First of all he was very humorous while he was talking about this matter and I think it is important to keep humour in things because it keeps the viewers attention throughout. As future teachers this can be interpreted as keeping math fun and creative, because when a teacher loses touch of her fun side and becomes entirely serious it is difficult for students to enjoy math in the same way. The part where he talks about his son being in the nativity scene was particularly intriguing to me because I could relate to his conclusion about the event. The boy did not say the correct line, but instead said 'Frank sent this', his conclusion was that children will take a chance, even if they don't know, they will try. He says that he does not believe that being wrong and being creative is the same thing but that children are not afraid of being wrong and that if you are not prepared to be wrong then you will never come up with anything original. This makes perfect sense as it relates to children learning math because we, as teachers, must encourage students to try and attempt a problem, even if they are wrong, instead of discourage. I had a teacher in Elementary school who made me feel stupid for trying because my method for solving the problem was not correct. Children need guidance and encouragement, discouraging children from trying only destroys their confidence and makes them feel like trying something is a waste of time because their answer might be wrong. Thus, children grow into adults who are frightened of being wrong and I believe we learn from our mistakes even more than we learn from our accomplishments because it makes us go back to where we started, figure out what went wrong the first time and fix it.

I do think that schools are beginning to kill children's creative spirit because teachers look for that one answer to a question or that one correct response to an assignment but they should take more time to analyze and think about what made the child think about the assignment in that way? If the  reasoning is still unclear, the teacher should sit with the student and ask questions about their piece. As teachers we expect students to ask questions when they do not understand a given reading or problem or whatever it may be, but as educators I think it is important for us to ask questions and look deeper into our students work, all children have creativity and we should encourage students to show it in their work.

Mathematics Autobiography (Ed. 3940)

I have trouble remembering specific experiences from math classes in my Primary and Elementary years but I do remember that I did not dislike mathematics during this time. when I think about mathematics classes in these years the experiences that I vaguely remember are the ones where we, as the students, were actively learning by doing. For example, I remember using manipulatives such as 'counters' (which were small coin-sized, clear objects that we used to count and do simple math) and I remember making our own geometric shapes with paper and tape and also learning to count money, where we had plastic and paper money to practice and learn with. Reflecting on these memories being the only few that I remember, it is interesting that they are the ones where the students in the class were learning by doing and actively learning about a topic. This very much relates to my way of learning now as an adult because I am the type of learner who learns by doing, experimenting and creating. I need to be using my hands and my brain at the same time, if a teacher is teaching I need to be making notes and writing and if I am being shown how to use or do something, I need to have it in my hands while the person explains each step. I think there are a large amount of students who learn in this way and I think by getting the students to actively participate in activities rather than listen to the teacher talk about a topic for long periods of time will make the learning experience more memorable. My mathematics classroom from K-6 was not a very interactive one but I really believe that students should be active while learning, they should be given a variety of different opportunities to understand a concept.

My very worst memory of math as a young student is from when I was in grade four. Our class was learning about multiplication and division and I was really having trouble memorizing the multiplication tables and my teacher had pointed me out to answer a question on the board. I was so nervous and so scared that I would get the answer wrong and on top of these feelings I had to stand in front of my class and solve this problem on the board. when I got to the front of the class the teacher handed me the chalk and told me to answer the problem, I stood there and my mind was blank, I did not know the answer and I felt very embarrassed. The teacher looked at me after a minute of silence and said "well are you going to solve the problem or are you stupid?" I then felt even more embarrassed that I did not know the answer so I went back to my seat and sat with my face touching my desk and my arms folded around my face so that no one could see that I was crying. I remember leaving school that day and not ever wanting to come back. I felt like I was a complete failure and that I would never be able to do math because I was stupid. After that year I became a little more confident with mathematics because I had had some very positive and encouraging math teacher to help me along he way. I am still nervous when it comes to math and if I am ever put on the spot to answer a math question my brain goes completely blank and it is very difficult to feel confident about math.

For assessment in Elementary school, I remember doing math tests and having to study a unit or topic and write a test on it. I remember for some seat work we were paired with a buddy and we would work together as a team to complete a worksheet or an assigned set of questions from the textbook. Writing tests for math in grade 4, 5 and 6 then prepared us for junior and senior high where much of the assessment is exams. I had a wonderful math teacher in grade 10, 11 and 12, Mr. J. Ping. He was the most caring and patient teacher I have ever had. He was very concerned about a student's success in his class and he would do anything to help us better understand a topic. I would often stay after school with him and he would tutor me with topics I was not understanding. This was very helpful and I really loved how much he cared about me understanding a topic and how much effort he would put into helping me understand better.

I then went on to complete mathematics 1090 and mathematics 1051 in University. I do not consider mathematics to be one of my strong points but I truly believe that my high school math teacher helped build my confidence in math and helped me learn that its okay if I did not understand something. He taught me that teachers are there to help students understand and I should not be afraid to admit that I do not understand something, their job is to help students understand.

Welcome

Hello Everyone and Welcome to my Blog!

My name is Danika and I am currently an education student at Memorial University Newfoundland (MUN) and I will be posting for a class on mathematics in primary/elementary classrooms, Education 3940. I live in St. John's Newfoundland and I have lived here for four years where I am currently completing my Education degree but I was raised in a tiny rural town on the northern peninsula of Newfoundland called Roddickton. I have never blogged before and I think this will be an interesting experience for both me as the blogger and you as the reader, so please enjoy and I hope you find something inspiring and insightful in my writing.