As I was driving out of town this week, I was thinking about
teaching math to elementary kids.
I was imagining straight lecture with no visuals and almost drove off
the road. Math is visually all
around us and therefore needs to be taught visually. Yes, there are many symbols that need to be memorized, but
they also need to be learned.
Take sets for example, they, like many other math concepts,
start out fairly simple and grow into much larger and more complicated
ideas. The foundation needs to be
intact before more can be added to it.
I want to provide each student with the solid foundation that I never
had.
I had a lot of trouble with the idea of sets. There are a lot of confusing vocabulary
and symbols but, with relative examples and visuals to go along with
instruction, I could actually see what they were talking about. The Venn diagram is a great
example. Drawing the circles and
shading in the union or intersection can suddenly provide new meaning and
understanding.
With this in my mind, as I continued my road trip home, I
couldn’t help but notice the many intersections I came upon or the union of
marriage that took place at the resort we stayed at. The packing list for each person in the family that could
have been made using sets and maybe we wouldn’t have brought too many things or
forgot certain things had we considered subsets. It became a game for me while I was driving to see how many
ways I could relate the real world to my future teaching methods. Before I knew it we were home and it
was time to unpack and apply my new set of ideas.
Check out this website for more ideas on teaching the
concept of sets.
No comments:
Post a Comment