Today will be the last session with Dr Yeap and his wonderful Maths activities.
ASSESSMENT
I would like to share with my teachers the unorthodox way of assessing children’s Maths understanding. To bring the children outdoor as what Dr Yeap had shown at the Hort-Park.
From the Hort-Park Frame, he showed us many Maths concepts that could be applied. For instance, children can learn multiplication, division, addition and skip counting just by looking at this frame. It would be a fun learning experience.
This is a good example of incidental learning. We could also assess the children with questions of the Maths concepts that they have learned during the outdoor activities. He said that when assessing the children, need not be just paper and pencil. We can assess children through interviews and observations during activities in and out of the classroom.
MRT TASK
When we were asked to calculate the height between the level one and the basement of the MRT station I thought it was madness! However, with our short ruler, we managed!
Our group found that there are 62 steps and the height of each step is 15cm.
Therefore, the height between level one and the basement is 62 X 15cm =930cm. That is 9.3 meters!
STORY
The story about ‘How big is a Foot’ to introduce standard unit in length is funny. The children would love such story. Teaching (teacher) and learning (children) Maths could be a fun experience. We can use storybooks to relate to the Maths concepts.
Dr Yeap ended the day with the story about a butterfly. It is a heart-wrenching story. As educators, we must never shortchange our children by spoon-feeding them with answers without teaching them how to get the answers. We can do a lot of damage to a child if we do not go through the proper process. Just as the saying goes, 'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.'
Click on the link to read the full story of the butterfly http://instructor.mstc.edu/instructor/swallerm/Struggle%20-%20Butterfly.htm
THANK YOU
Even though it was a 24-hour session, I have learned a lot about Maths. It is not only about numbers, it is a HOLISTIC APPROACH to develop oneself. In life, metaphorically, I do not want my children to be last in the queue. As it is, most of my children are living in a challenging situation and I hope I could help them to move up to the front of that queue. Thank you Dr Yeap for helping me to help others.
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