Week 1 - Reflection
Highlight,
discuss and reflect on mathematics education, the curriculum, the organisation
of learning, the implications for you as future teacher. Support your ideas
with literature.
During this week’s tutorial, I was immersed in a collaborative learning environment that focused on manipulatives. Personally, I found that working with manipulatives allowed me to gather a visual understanding of number enabling a far more easier process. Since I am a visual learner, the manipulatives of the six-sided dice and coloured blocks were helpful tools that assisted me in working out the problem. This activity incorporated key aspects of the number and algebra strand within the syllabus (NESA, 2017), it was evident that the sub-strands of addition, subtraction and multiplication needed to be analysed and understood to successfully complete this activity. Within the curriculum there are a variety of mathematical strands that are implemented in the classroom, however these strands need to accommodate to the needs, interests and skill level of each individual student. According to The Australian Association of mathematics teachers (2006); excellence in mathematics teaching comes in forms of having a sound knowledge base of each student.
Putting this into practice would now be far easier to do as I have grasped onto the concepts of the curriculum and how I can be flexible with alternative approaches; such as the use of manipulatives. I decided on applying my knowledge toward a preschool classroom that I teach and immediately recognised that some children needed visual cues and hands on objects to understand the task. Through this observation, I set up base ten materials and asked the children to form a simple two-digit number. The children who initially found this task difficult used the materials to add or subtract on the base ten board and gradually developed an understanding of these two concepts.
NSW Education Standards Authority.(n.d.). Mathematics K-10. Retrieved from : http://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/mathematics/mathematics-k10/
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