SNAP Math Fair Reflection

I was very excited to see how everyone in the class had presented their problems and how they would implement them to a student. As I pondered about what the class would look like when we had it all set up it reminded me of the way I would prepare for a science fair when I was in Junior High, and I loved the science fair because that is where I could bring my creative ideas out and collaborate them with scientific ideas and experiments. I have never done a Math fair when I was in school but I was so pleased with the way everyone presented their problems and collaborated it with their creative-teacher side! 

I think the main reason I liked doing science fair project was because there was a lot of time and effort put into this one topic and I was so familiar with the project that I created, that it made me feel proud. The same feeling was felt today when I explained our Math problem to the people who visited our display. I felt that I was teaching them how to do something that I had spent a lot of time and effort working with and creating and it felt liberating to teach it to someone who may have never seen the problem before. 

Everyone has a different way of interpreting and explaining something and I think that it one thing in this project that was seen very prominent, it did not matter how the problem was interpreted and  played out, that was the individuality part of the fair, as long as we understood what the problem was asking us to do. I enjoyed Penny's problem with the greedy pigs and I also enjoyed Stacy's Sudoku problem, I actually never tried a Sudoku problem before and I always thought they looked difficult, maybe because they were numbers but I was impressed that I could work on this problem. 

I really loved the math fair and I defiantly think it is something that I would endorse in the school I will work at because math is a very important part of the curriculum. Seriously, why not have a math fair? there are science fairs and heritage fairs, but why not math fairs? This is such a fun and creative way to present math problems to students. If I were to hold a math fair in my classroom I would give my students lots of class time to work on their project because I think most of the time parents do a lot of the work at home for the students so that it can be done and "over with" faster. This is sad because the most beneficial part of a fair is the time and effort put into working out the problems or finding answers to the question or exploring or researching. I really believe children learn a lot through inquiry and there is definitely a reward aspect to solving or understanding something on their own, even if they do not reach the "correct" solution, there is value in their inquiry and the though put into trying to figure out and solve the problem.  

A Look at the K-6 Mathematics Curriculum & Resources

This was a very interesting class because I got a chance to look at the Mathematics curriculum guides, resources, textbooks, and work books of each individual grade level from kindergarten to Grade 6. I really enjoyed the set up of this class where we were in groups and moved from table to table to see the resources for each grade at different tables. In my group we had a chance to discuss the various elements that we saw from each grade level, the things that surprised us, and the things that we were glad to see. personally I was relieved to see that there a lot of resources for a mathematics teacher. I did two curriculum courses and we never actually got to see the resources or text books for any grade level or subject. We were not even told that there was resources for teachers besides the text books. I originally thought that teachers were suppose to make up or find their own activities for the topic and SCOs in the curriculum guide. Therefore seeing all the resources that are on hand for teachers was a relief. It is good to know or have something to refer to if you're stuck, and it is also good to know that teachers do not have to stick strictly to the resources given to them.


The thing that was most surprising was how big of a difference in difficulty there is between kindergarten and grade one and between grade one and grade two. There are books provided for teachers to read to students or for students to read on their own if they are put in the classroom library, but the difficulty in understanding and the amount of text was really surprising to me especially from grade one to grade two. These books have a lot of great mathematical topics in them and would definitely be an asset to any classroom in order to solidify the child's understanding of the concepts. As well, the pictures and examples given are very well done and explained.


I was also surprised when I was looking through the grade 6 text book and teacher resources because many of the problems were very open ended and gives the students the opportunity to explore the solutions. I was surprised that all the problems that I looked at in the grade 6 resources I was able to solve. My worst fear when it comes to teaching Mathematics was having to teach grade 6 math, because I assumed that the problems were very difficult and that I would have trouble explaining and teaching children how to solve and explore the solutions. Being able to sit down and scan through all the resources for grade 6 made teaching grade 6 mathematics not so scary because there are so many resources at hand and today's teachers know that there is a YouTube video, a blog, or a website that can help explain anything. The resources at hand are unimaginable so there's no need to worry.


Looking at these resources for a teacher does not change how I will teach but it definitely gives me a better perspective on how I will prepare to teach. This class was very beneficial for me because I was able to be hands on with the material that I will teach one day and I realized that it's not so scary once you dive into the material and see what was making me feel so scared.