{"id":7332,"date":"2016-08-31T06:49:30","date_gmt":"2016-08-30T20:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/profpete.com\/?p=7332"},"modified":"2018-08-28T05:52:34","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T05:52:34","slug":"math-news-better-ways-teach-math-aboriginal-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profpete.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/31\/math-news-better-ways-teach-math-aboriginal-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Math in the News: Better Ways to Teach Math to Aboriginal Students"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Indigenous students in Australia typically lag two years behind other kids in math: a disappointing statistic by any measure. Dr Chris Matthews of Griffith University has come up with a new approach that shows great promise for connecting indigenous kids with mathematics.<\/p>\n<p>Going further, I believe that this new method would help any kids of a non-mainstream background to understand math. Watch the video for more:<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-H5fMaJIJhM?theme=light&amp;rel=0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>The approach recommended by Dr Matthews is explained by Prof Tom Cooper of the YuMi Deadly Centre at QUT, using the acronym RAMR:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Reality<\/strong>: connect first of all with students&#8217; existing culture and interests. In the case of indigenous kids, this includes story telling and dance<\/li>\n<li><strong>Abstraction<\/strong>: come up with ways to turn stories and concerns into mathematical problems, equations and so on<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mathematics<\/strong>: invent mathematics in standard symbolic format to capture the original question or scenario<\/li>\n<li><strong>Reflect<\/strong>: consider the result and match the mathematical results with the original source situation and consider how well the mathematics enabled the solution for the problem, or explained a story in mathematical terms<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>[Click the link below to watch Prof Cooper&#8217;s explanation]<\/p>\n<p>But a teacher who teaches students of non-indigenous but also non-mainstream backgrounds could adopt the same basic pedagogy, starting with those students stories, culture and questions that interest them.<\/p>\n<p>Mathematics has sadly often been presented as the product of a lot of &#8220;old white males&#8221;, which for some students immediately puts them offside and makes math irrelevant and boring, in those students&#8217; minds. This approach deals with this problem by starting with examples from the students&#8217; own culture and background.<\/p>\n<h3>What do you think?<\/h3>\n<p>How should we teach math to students\u00a0from backgrounds other than our own? Share a comment below.<\/p>\n<h2>Reference Articles<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><strong>Main article (ABC Australia)<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2016-08-15\/closing-the-maths-gap-with-story-and-dance\/7700656\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Maths, story and dance: an Indigenous approach to teaching<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/ydc.qut.edu.au\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">YuMi Deadly Centre<\/a>, Queensland University of Technology<\/li>\n<li>YouTube video:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9FAntCEMyjQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Professor Tom Cooper &#8211; YuMi Deadly Maths<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u25ba <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCE_VT9793kOu1ePBMp7X_tQ?sub_confirmation=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SUBSCRIBE to Professor Pete&#8217;s Classroom on YouTube<\/a> to learn more expert tips on teaching K-6 math for understanding<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Indigenous students in Australia typically lag two years behind other kids in math. How can teachers connect indigenous kids with classroom math? A new approach proposed by Dr Chris Matthews incorporates story telling and dance as ways to connect students&#8217; interests and culture with math.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,22,12],"tags":[57,58,33,28,41,9,23,25,47,11,26],"class_list":["post-7332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-connecting-math-experience","category-math-in-the-news","category-teaching-mathematics","tag-aboriginal-math","tag-indigenous-math","tag-math-for-kids","tag-math-in-the-news","tag-math-success","tag-mathematical-thinking","tag-news-item","tag-real-life-mathematics","tag-school-success","tag-teaching-math","tag-video-item"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profpete.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profpete.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profpete.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profpete.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profpete.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7332"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/profpete.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8366,"href":"https:\/\/profpete.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332\/revisions\/8366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profpete.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profpete.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profpete.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profpete.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}