Manipulatives

Over this semester, I have learned a lot. I learned that teaching students in a fun way is much more exciting for the class. It helps the students learn and allows them to find fun in math, with a lot of people need to do. Using manipulative's, games and different ideas from the class and Mrs. Andersen has been very educational. I believe that we need to use different strategies for students to learn math with out being board. And being in this class I have learned many different way, as a teacher, you can do this.

One thing I decided to do was research different manipulative's online. I found a site you can virtually use manipulative's. This is a great way to show your students if you have a projector. You can move different blocks, or anything you need on this program. I encourage anyone to look and see what this virtual manipulative's site is like!

Games

I just found a really great game! It is really easy and I think a great way to learn math. In elementary it is always hard for teachers to keep students focused. I think by showing them fun games for math, this would keep them interested. This game I found is baseball math. You get to keep batting until you get an answer wrong. And you can pick if you want to add, subtract, multiply, divide, or do all of them together. You can also pick if you want it to be easy, medium or hard. I think that if you show your students there is a fun and exciting way to learn and practice you math skill, your student will have more fun learning!!!

You can find the game here!!!

4 day week

I was looking online and found this really interesting article.
Check it out!!!


I have never herd of this 4 day week. And in the journal it says that "nearly 15,000-plus districts nationwide, more than 100 in at least 17 states currently use the four-day system". This is just crazy for me to imagine because I never herd anything like this before. I think that this is a bad idea. One thing would be because most parents work a 5 day week and then all of these students would need a place to stay for one day. Another reason would be because would children be learning what they need for the next year with only 4 day a week? I think teachers would have a great deal of problems trying to teach without a 5 day week.

Percents to make your life easier

Have you ever been in the store, and something was on sale but you cannot figure out how much the price is marked down. Well today in class I learned a very easy method for this. You start out by multiplying the number by 10%. For example, say there is a shirt at the mall and it is $20 and it is 10% off. You would move the decimal place over one spot to the left leaving you with $2 making the shirt $18. Now say the $20 shirt is 30% off. You would still start by moving the decimal one place to the left leaving you with $2 then you would multiply it by 3, giving a total of $6 off the shirt; making the shirt $14. This will come in handy for many other things besides shopping, but it is an excellent way to teach and learn how to multiply by percents.

There are many other ways you can multiply by a percent, but they are not as easy as this…

Pi

So I just got done Pi caroling with my classmates. Apparently it was Pi day yesterday 3.14, which is the first 3 numbers in the number Pi. It was pretty amusing walking into the student life office and having awkward stars from other students wondering what we were doing. First we sang the Pi song in the tune "Oh Christmas Tree", then a Pi song in the tune of "Happy Birthday". It was defiantly an experience.

So I just want to give a big shout out to PI DAY!!!

Fractions

Today in class we learned about fractions. I can say that in my past math classes, I have gotten pretty familiar with fractions. But I learned today it is always a good review to go back through the basics and relearn what you already new. It made me more comfortable, and made me understand them in a whole new way. For example, Maria showed us that are it always easier to draw out the fractions in a rectangular bar, and then divide the rectangle into the factions.

I also learned today many students learned the saying "crisis-cross-applesauce" when dividing fractions. But Maria showed us that for future teachers that is not always the right way to teach dividing fractions. This is because in high math classes you start using x's and y's and then you can not factor to put them in lowest terms. This made a lot of since and I will keep that in mind for the future!

First Blog

Hey I am here and ready to blog!!!