Exploring Mathematics

During Tuesday’s class we were introduced to the many different teacher resources available to us when teaching the subject of Mathematics. I had previous experience with the Newfoundland curriculum guides but was astounded at the amount of other tools that us a beginning educators would be provided with when we begin a full time teaching position. After seeing both the prescribed math books within my observation days, I realized how much teachers rely on these materials especially in the elementary grades. Why is it that these math books become so significant during these grades compared to the primary levels? Being exposed to each grade level I can truly believe that resorting to these math resources during elementary causes this subject area to suffer and become tiresome for students. Teaching mathematics in primary involves a SMARTboard, movement and most importantly hands-on learning. For elementary, mathematics is completed with worksheets. No wonder doing math in the higher levels was dull when I attended elementary as a child, and unfortunately it still is today. “Our task as teachers is to help children construct relationships and ideas, not to get them to ‘do pages’. We should look on the textbook as simply one of a variety of teaching resources available in the classroom, not as the object of instruction” (Van de Walle, Folk, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2011, p. 61). Although there seems to be a great deal of elementary teachers using these resources, it is important that us as upcoming educators make note of this and expand our teaching resources for the sake of our student’s interest in mathematics.

After scanning and analyzing the resources of each grade level, I believe that there is a dramatic jump in the amount of text from grade one to grade two in terms of the actual children’s books that they are entitled to read. These books of course, are appealing to this age group but I just personally feel that going from a grade where they are just beginning their reading development to reading a book with a large amount of text, is risky. In a way, these new grade two students would be setting themselves up for failure rather than comfortably decoding and comprehending the words and concepts within these books. On this note I feel it is important that for us to understand the importance of making the proper accommodations and modifications for future students to ensure they succeed within this subject area. “In planning accommodations and modifications, the goal is to enable each child to successfully reach your learning objectives, not to change the objectives. This is how equity is achieved in the classroom”. (Van de Walle, Folk, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2011, p. 62). I could not have said this better myself and I hope that all viewers of this blog understand the importance of both using different means of teaching and accommodating all learners!