Infants as young as six months recognize interesting shapes. And babies who show higher spatial reasoning skills do better in math at age four. This is good news for parents and carers who purposefully try to help their children understand the world around them in explicitly mathematical ways...
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' interests and culture with math.
Rote learning of math was abandoned in western nations as early as the 1960s. So why is the UK government spending £41m to train teachers in 8000 English primary schools in so-called "mastery maths", based on the approach in Shanghai, China? More importantly, is rote learning somehow the "missing ingredient" in English kids' learning of maths?
The recent national census really caught the attention of the Australian populace, mostly for all the wrong reasons. The official website couldn't cope with the traffic to the site on "census night", which was entirely predictable, and at the same time it was subjected to several "Denial of Service" (DOS) attacks. But apart from that, what can we teach children about censuses? Here are a few ideas:
Are there kids in your class that you just don't "get"? Do you teach students who you feel will never amount to much? The video that prompted this week's blog is an interview between Larry King and Gary Vaynerchuk. Chances are, you're not much like Gary Vee. And nor am I. If you're like most teachers, you were good at school, you were good at following the rules, and you worked hard to figure out the educational system and succeeded at it. The system is designed to reward such behaviour, with academic awards, good grades and ultimately a pathway to a good job.
Do your students believe that math is irrelevant to their lives? Sadly, all too many of them do, especially as they reach high school. The article I discuss this week lists 10 occasions in which major Australian supermarkets got the mathematics behind their special offers totally wrong. Sometimes the “offer” was worse than the standard […]
How can a teacher use Pokémon Go to inspire her students to study hard in math? Surprisingly enough, the viral hit Pokémon Go which broke records at Apple's iTunes store has multiple possible uses in the regular K-6 classroom. Watch the video for much more!
What do your students believe about their abilities in mathematics? Do they say "I can do this", or "I'll never get this"? We discuss a TES article which focuses on the message that "Everyone Can" succeed at math, urging teachers and students to believe in the students' success. What do you think? Is simply being positive about students' abilities and capabilities really going to make a difference to the results that they achieve? And are some people simply born "with a maths brain" and others not?
Have you seen this math puzzle? Do you know what the correct answer is? Original article link: Can You Work Out This Mind-bending Flower Puzzle? – News.com Australia, 17th June 2016 If you teach math, like me, your friends probably sent you this math puzzle, thinking you’d like it “because you’re a teacher”. As a […]
