Math Class

Week 4

This week in math class we continued looking at problem solving skills and strategies and how each students has their own unique ways of doing this. This weeks problems involved the use of manipulative and algebraic reasoning, or in other words, patterns. Algebraic reasoning is based on our abilities to recognize patterns and generalize from them, and to me, almost like decoding. We were given different patterns i class and asked to recognize them and "decode" what the pattern was, and use this technique to determine what the pattern would look like if it was to continue to a given number position. In order to help students visualize this, we were looking images and also given tiles to manipulate and get our hands on at making our own patterns. We also used gallery walks to look at our peers patterns to try and solve what the pattern was that they had created with their tiles. I like this technique as it allows you to explore what other students and your peers are doing and gain a different perspective on the questions that you were also answering. This shows you that there are multiple ways to do mathematics and solve problems and that their infect is a creativity component to mathematics just as we explored during the online modules this week. As Junaid Mubeen states in his post,  

"Mathematics must be creative, else it isn't mathematics". 

Creativity is describes as the ability to join seemingly disparate ideas to form new expressions and thoughts and emotion, which is exactly what you are doing while problem solving in math. Math is all about discoveries in regards to patterns and symmetries and using what knowledge we know to continue to make new discoveries. Based on this, critical thinking and creative thinking are essential to do math and all students are capable of this as they develop the knowledge and skills to further do so. As Matthew Oldridge says on his blog,  "creative thinking: making something new, critical thinking: making sound judgements". Overtime a student does a mathematical problem, they are making something new by using their own patterns and strategies in a creative way. To arrive at an answer, students are also checking their work and testing to see if they are infect correct in solving the problems and if their processes worked - by being critical thinkers.