Math / Mistakes &Success

      This week, we looked at making mistakes in math! Mathematics is one of the subjects that people often find it very difficult to allow for freedom in. Everyone believes that math has one right answer- and that is not necessarily true. Math work has multiple ways people can express the same numbers in different sequences or formats, and oftentimes the answer can be found in a variety of ways. It is important to recognize that creativity is available in math work, and if honed in on, can encourage students to make mistakes and thrive in an environment of imperfection.
       I also took the time to read the Math and Speed Forum because I feel like this is something I personally struggle with in math and was reminded of this week. During class, we did a Minds On activity that had us doing very quick math work on the fly, without calculators! This was something I had not done in a very long time. I was shocked at how long it was taking me to do more simple math without a calculator.
      Upon reading Charlene's post on the Forums on the Math and Speed section, I was enlightened by what she was saying. She stated, "speed does not equal intelligence" (Charlene Day). This is a super important thing to teach students when learning fundamental math skills. When teaching younger grades basic math such as multiplication and division, its important to repetitively practice at the students own pace to ensure that they have the skills before pushing them to do it faster.

This week was also the first week of Webinars! This took up a lot of my math-brain this week, because Charlene and I had to prepare our 30 minute interactive lesson. We had quite a challenge on our hands, but we pushed through and managed to come up with a Webinar based on creating a safe environment for math inquiry.
This is a topic I am pretty passionate about as a future educator, because I feel allowing for inquiry is super important. Inquiry allows students to freely explore what they find the most interesting in a subject. For mathematics, allowing for this to happen in an emotionally safe environment is extremely essential. Math somehow, and for some reason, often brings out the sensitive side in people, maybe because there is that fear of judgment in relation to a persons intelligence. This means that creating a positive learning environment for students is absolutely necessary to encourage a safe learning environment that allows for students to make mistakes! Charlene and I detailed a variety of ways to allow for safe exploration of inquiry. I am very proud of the work we did, and loved using the tools Charlene had explored during her first teaching block. I really learned a lot from the Webinar process, and loved facilitating it!
I also had the task of watching Ally and Nicole's webinar, focused on problem solving. I super enjoyed the way they played out their webinar! I loved learning about problem solving in a very realistic way. I really feel like I learned a lot of new math strategies this week.