Gina at the Math Forum

Over the last couple of weeks I have been training to become a math dr. I’m super excited to be able to do this. A math dr is someone that answers student’s questions in a proper, professional, and coherent manner. At first it sounds somewhat easy, you think to yourself “Well i’ve learned this stuff before so I should be able to answer it.” However! You need to make sure your are very specific in explaining your answers. Also, you cannot just provide one method of solving the problem. You should list at least two methods incase the student does not understand one. Even if you just put one your details need to be very very specific. The hardest part of it all is understanding what the person is truly asking. I feel as though this was my biggest downfall. When first reading one of the problems I assumed I knew exactly what they were asking and began providing an explanation for this, but then when I went back to reread the question I realized that this wasn’t what he was actually asking. He was asking a more specific question. I thought the student literally just wanted me to help solve the problem, but it was actually more in depth than that. It made me think of all the times when I’ve been in a classroom and a student asks the teacher a question, yet even though the teacher thinks he/she is answering the students question the student is actually still confused. I feel as though through this math dr training i’m learning more and more the difficulties behind being a teacher and I feel as though this is a great experience!

This week I was able to start working on teacher packets for primary problems. It was quite interesting! When creating this packet, you’re given problems that you can do simple math, like addition or subtraction to find the right answer, but you can’t just write that. You can’t help but be like, “Oh just subtract the two numbers and you’ll get the right answer!” Thats the main thing with these packets. You have to literally forgot everything you learned and figure out other ways to solve it. You’re teaching kindergarteners and first graders how to solve these problems. So you have to ask yourself, “Without using formulas, how can I portray this information?” The answer is through drawings, acting it out, and having the students list what they notice and wonder. Once of my favorite techniques is probably acting it out. I always loved that when I was in elementary school and it also helped the information stick in my head the most!! Acting it out gives the students something to look back on, instead of them remembering what they wrote down in their notebooks, they remember what they acted out in front of the classroom. All three of these techniques are very helpful. Drawing a picture gives the students an opprotunity to visualize the problem, where I notice, I wonder gives the students to discuss what is going on in the problem, which may help them see any information they may have missed. I really enjoyed working on these packets and am excited to start wo

This week I was able to look through various problems of the week posted by the Math Forum and different solutions that students have given. As you all know, when solving a math problem there are often various ways to do so. Sometimes you may solve a problem two different ways and get two different answers, but which one is the right one? Other times You may solve a problem the same way a few times, just to check your answer, and get different answers each time. And finally how many of you have solved a problem using a wrong method, or plugging in a wrong number and still got close, if not the right answer? It’s those final cases that you’re like “WOW that was lucky!” I’ve come to learn that if you check your answers using different methods and get the same answer for both, thats when they appear to be the most accurate. But if you’re getting a different answer using different methods that doesn’t necessarily mean they both are wrong, one technique may just be more appropriate for the type of problem you are doing.

This week I examined various student’s responses to problems. Before I could truly understand their thoughts, I of course had to do the problem myself. I noticed that I used the same techniques as some of the students, but also did completely different methods than others. I was working on a problem involving a building and one child made a completely unsupported assumption about the size of one side of the building, but still resulted in the correct answer. I had to look at this problem over and over again to try and figure out his thoughts. Once figuring it out, I figured that yes his assumption was unsupported, but I could definitely see why he thought that way. He definitely had one of those cases of getting the right answer and being like “WOW that was lucky!” It’s definitely important students know to try various methods when solving problems. If you’re not able to get an answer one way, or seem to be getting a really weird answer, then try a different way! You never know! The ability to guess and check is what makes math, well, MATH!