I liked math when I was young because I didn't struggle with it in school until Jr. High. I think part of the reason that I did well in mathematics was because I first learned about it at home. I sang hymns in church and learned to play the piano and so I was exposed to fractions in music (quarter notes, sixteenth notes, etc.). This didn't seem to help me much when I went to school though. I actually didn't understand the fractions in music until I was in High School. One thing that did help me learn fractions was having 7 siblings
(6 younger). Whenever my mom would come home with treats, my siblings and I divided them between ourselves. This was an incentive to learn to divide things equally, especially if the youngest gets to choose first. If my mom brought home a bag of candy, we would make sure everyone got equal amounts of each color (even the yellows, bleh!). Sometimes we would even cut up candy bars so everyone could have some. I think these and other experiences built my "background information" which made it easier for me to learn fractions in school. I want to help my future students to be able to connect new ideas to their background knowledge by finding things that they have experienced and using that to teach the new concepts. It's hard for anyone to store information to which they can't make a connection.
Hi Joli,
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of connecting students' background experiences with cooking or siblings to mathematics content. I've also heard of some teachers asking students to select a social problem (e.g., traffic congestion) and make a presentation mathematically (e.g.,for every 100 cars, there have been five accidents at this intersection. How could we present these findings mathematically to the city council to make them put in a new traffic light?) I think the more that we contextualize education for our students, the more it has an impact for them. Thanks for your posting!