Math Magical!

This week, I went to a Professional Development workshop on Math-magical ideas. The professor was so informative and really helpful. It was an awesome experience to be able to learn from her.
One of the things she did that really opened up my mind was start her introduction by explaining that she was not what people often call a "mathematician". She loved teaching literature. Her first love was books and stories. From this, she developed a way to teach math using stories and emphasized the correlation between math and literature.
As an English major in my Undergrad, I loved this! I was so excited about the book list she gave and all the ideas she inspired in me.

Retrieved From Google. (October 2017).

One of the books the professor was introduced called "Ten Times Better" (pictured above). Books like these use numbers inside of the story. Using this with any level can really help students have relational understanding. It can also be modified or edited to fit in every grade level. Perhaps before reading the below section, students could estimate how many teeth the dragon-animal has, and then what is ten times better than this? The cool thing is it is easily accessible for students, because most students enjoy being read to. Having a picture book allows for students to have a visual representation of the math problem that is fun and interesting, even older students will buy into this, because they will feel it is fun to be read to. Using literature to tell math-based stories is an easily modifiable task that can be rich and fulfill many expectations in one lesson.

Retrieved From Google. (October 2017).

Further, this week I was reading about demonstrating understanding through drawing in math. If students can draw out a problem and how they understand it, they are more likely to be able to get to the answer in an efficient and understanding way for them personally. I love the idea of using drawing in math to show interpretation and thought processes. It is an easy way to differentiate for students.
Drawing out math problems such as fractions allows students to have a real life example as well, because they can relate to it. Oftentimes, teachers use food examples when it comes to fractions because it is super interesting, gets students engaged and excited, and is an accurate representation of a fraction.
Using websites such as Math Playground to get students into math is also a good idea. Fun websites that are interactive and use play-based activities get students excited about learning. Sometimes they do not even realize that they are actually learning math when they are playing the games.
Another website we explored was https://nrich.maths.org which was a really good website for resources for all ages. I am loving compiling multiple resources an adding them to my library for reference later on. I really think they will be super helpful when in placement in a few weeks.
This week, I feel confident I have furthered my math knowledge and I am interested and excited to keep learning more!