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Reflecting on Mathematics

    As I progress through each week, I feel like my ability to connect to maths and sciences in a different light is slowly progressing. I am able to approach these subjects from different perspectives, which will benefit my teaching pedagogy in order to engage all of my students. As we all know, not every student learns the same, and as a teacher, it is essential for us to understand how we can adapt our approaches to subjects in order to meet the needs of all students. This was shown extremely well through the activity where we were tasked with creating a shape with building cubes, to create a shape with the smallest surface area. Although we were given a task, we were not told how we had to find a solution; we were simply given the tools to find a solution in our own ways. For someone like myself, who did not have a positive outlook on mathematics growing up, I found this activity engaging because I was able to come up with a solution in my own way; there was no "right" way it had to be solved.

    When reading the chapter, there was a quotation that really stuck out to me; it was, "... for bringing mathematics to life and for bringing it into one's life..." (Davis et. al., 2019).  This is a crucial
quotation as it emphasizes the importance of relating mathematics to students' lives so they are able to see the meaning of mathematics. During these weeks, we dove into conceptual learning and how we can bring smaller, building pieces to solve a larger problem. I especially gravitated toward this theory because it allows students to build upon their pre-existing knowledge to solve a problem. It is important to have an interesting approach to teaching mathematics because of how disengaging it can be for some students.

    For so many years, mathematics has always been looked at as strictly calculations involving numbers and symbols; however, it is slowly adapting to more of an emphasis on experiences, activity, and analogy. I found it extremely interesting how storytelling in mathematics can be used to bring teachable moments to the classroom. It is all about how the teacher is able to relate mathematics to the students' lives so they can find those meaningful moments. The concept of modeling is an adequate method to assist students in connecting with their methods. Analogies and metaphors give students the opportunity to develop mathematical lenses that are transferable for any problem that they face. It develops a deeper foundational understanding of mathematics that students can use in real-life situations.


Davis, B., Francis, K., & Friesen, S. (2019). STEM. In STEM education by design: Opening horizons of possibility (pp. 1-12). essay, Routledge.

    

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