You are likely aware of the renewed focus on numeracy. During this past school year, all of our staff meetings and professional development focussed on numeracy - rich tasks, open-ended questions, parallel questions, attitudes to math (Growth Mindset), and so on.
Our math blocks increased from 1 period to 2 so I played around with a guided math format for a part of the year. Naturally a few of my students asked, "Why are we doing so much math?" and "Why do we have to learn this?" And by ask, I mean whined! :( I definitely needed to change our attitudes towards math!
At the beginning of each unit I would try to explain its application to our daily lives. This helped a bit. Check out this article, Teaching Kids Why Math Matters.
This discussion led to the creation of posters to help connect math to everyday activities and occupations.
There are every day scenarios that involve math...
And then some math motivation...
I'm super excited to use these posters in the upcoming year to help make math "real".
This poster pack is available {here}.
Our math blocks increased from 1 period to 2 so I played around with a guided math format for a part of the year. Naturally a few of my students asked, "Why are we doing so much math?" and "Why do we have to learn this?" And by ask, I mean whined! :( I definitely needed to change our attitudes towards math!
At the beginning of each unit I would try to explain its application to our daily lives. This helped a bit. Check out this article, Teaching Kids Why Math Matters.
This discussion led to the creation of posters to help connect math to everyday activities and occupations.
There are every day scenarios that involve math...
Then there are occupations that require a knowledge of a particular math topic...
And then some math motivation...
I'm super excited to use these posters in the upcoming year to help make math "real".
This poster pack is available {here}.
How do you get your students excited about math?
Side note: Gotta love Educlips clip art!
