“Instead of trying to make children love the math they hate, make a math they’ll love.” -- Seymour Papert
One huge theme that we have been discussing and keep coming back to in math class is how there is this idea of how students hate math and how can we get our students to enjoy math. It is in fact true as research has shown that students do dislike the subject for many reasons, such as, math is hard, boring and irrelevant. This research also tells us a few more things:
- these negative attitudes affect the students ability to learn the subject
- it is never too early or late to improve this relationship
- we as teachers can improve our students motivation by getting our students interested
The quote at the top of my blog post really resonated with me. Instead of focusing (and wasting time) trying to force our students to enjoy something that they hate and trying to convince them that what they should love what we are etching them, we should shift the focus to teaching them something in a way that they will love it.
According to this article by Tara Dusko, here are 5 fun ways to get your students to love this disliked subject:
1. Teach studnets to have a growth mindset
We need to have our students know and think that they can get better at math. We need to eliminate their fixed mindset of thinking they are hopeless and just naturally terrible at math.
2. Try guided math
To eliminate students from thinking that math is boring, we need to change up our math class structure and delivery as teachers. Do this by using mini lessons and student centred learning.
3. Get your students moving and collaborating
Create an interactive math classroom and get the students to work together to solve problems. Use clue and activities where students need to use their peers in order to solve these math problems.
4. Play fun math games
Kids love games, they are fun and interactive and are a great way to engage your students.
5. Use technology
Technology is also a fun and interactive way t engage your students while also making math relatable to them. There are tons of great websites and apps such as Prodigy that students will be able to enjoy themselves and learn math at the same time.
From personal experience, just doing the interactive activities and collaborative activities in my math class have really allowed me to be more interested in this subject and more involved and excited to work during math class. Just chasing how we go about teaching math to our students can make the biggest difference in their active participation within the class.
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Overall, throughout this math class we also focused on other big ideas and themes. These themes included busting myths in mathematics and focusing on creativity in math, meaning how students should feel free to explore mathematical problems and solve questions in a way that meets their needs, as there is more than one way to solve math. This is the theme that I will be focusing on the most moving forward as a math teacher and in my future placement. I strongly agree with what we have discussed in class as well as strongly believe in students having the knowledge and ability to do things in the way that they best relate with. In my future classrooms I hope to be able to encourage students to all have a different view point on a given mathematical problem so that they may be creative thinkers in the process of solving problems to solve it in a way that resonates with them. By hopefully doing this in my classroom, I ill also hopefully be able to eliminate the ideas that all students "dislike" math and create a positive math environment where students enjoy working through problem sin their own creative way.
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