Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Workshop 1 - Beginning Process


Hi, welcome to my blog! This blog is entitled as my written and visual journal of my learning in EAB 023. This blog will serves as an eviden
ce of my engagement of this unit through out the whole semester. I indeed hope that you enjoy reading it!!

Ojose ( 2008) states that children at early age are lack of the abstract representation in which logical and abstract concept is not yet understandable to them. In relation to this issue, there is a sequence that the teacher need to follow as to address this issue. In my first workshop of this subject, I have learned about beginning process which was proposed by Irons (1999) in which the teachers can apply this approach as to suit the children's mental capacity.

Beginning process is an important process of a child’s early mathematical exploration. This process sets up a ground to the later part of a child’s mathematical exploration. Therefore, it is extremely crucial to be aware of the impacts that this process have in shaping a child’s future in mathematics subject. In this segment of this blog, six of the beginning process will be discussed and explored. An explanation as well as examples and pictures will be provided as to give a clear picture regarding the process.

Identifying and describing attribute

-Irons ( 1999) describes this as process of comparing the similarities and differences of attributes via the engagement of senses such as sight, hearing, tasting and touching.

- Children's attention to detail is an aspect that the teacher should be focusing on as to develop reasoning skill. Discussion is the main mode in this process as the children's engagement with language use is further expanded and practice.


- In relation to the picture above, teacher can give several blocks of differ
ent length and colour. Teacher can prompt several questions regarding the differences and likeness of the blocks, for instance

" what can you tell me about that blocks?"

"what similarities does the all the blocks represent? So what do we call it if it has 6 faces, 12 lines and 8 verticals?"

"it is still a cuboid if it is in different colour and height?

- In responding to the teacher's inquiry, the students develop their usage of language.

MATCHING

- For this activities, the aspect of "sameness" of the attributes is being focused. Through engaging the students with the matching activities, the teacher is developing the students reasoning skill by proposing questions like "why do they match?".



- For example, the teacher can presents several blocks of different colour and shape as shown above, and ask the students to found those that match.

-Using their visual and touch sense, the students will be able to match the blocks according to the colours or shape. In describing the "sameness" of the attributes possessed by the blocks, the students engage in the use of language associated with the attribute that they have selected.

- In doing so, the student's reasoning skill is promoted at the early age.

SORTING

- Iron ( 1999) describes this as "involving matching, but with greater number of objects".

- For sorting activities, the teacher can ask the students to sort things by one attribute first, and later proceed to a more difficult one, which is sorting by two or more attribute.

Sorting by one attribute

- One of the activities that the teacher could use in sorting by one attributes is by using the activities shown in the video above. It is important to put at the back of the head that teacher need TO CHOOSE appropriate learning materials as to ensure the learning outcome is a success ( Irons,1999).

-Connecting mathematics to sustainability with the sorting of rubbish, enables the child to make real life connections (Perry and Dockett, 2002). In this case, the material ( the coloured ball) is a real object used in life, thus the students will be able to make a real life connection.

Sorting by two or more attribute
- Represent higher order thinking
- two dimensional sorting board is a good learning material to be used for this activity.


Comparing

- Comparison words such as 'longer, wider, larger, heavier,thicker, thinner, etc are used in this process in describing attribute of two objects.

- In introducing the comparison concept, teacher can compare the length of the student's hair : Ashlee's hair is longer than Leena's hair, but Ashlee's hair is shorter than Hannah. How could Ashlee's hair become long and short at the same time?". In this circumstances, the teacher needs to address that comparison is relative and it may change and has more than one relationship.By addressing those issue, it helps to understand that comparison is relative, not rigid within a context only.

Ordering

- Involves arranging of objects according to the relation between them. It can happen either in increasing or decreasing order.

* Irons (1999) states that "children learn best from experience that involves real world situation, because they can see a purpose. In doing so, the teacher could use activities shown in this website

'Christmas Math'


- Snowman and the Christmas mood helps to motivate the students on learning towards as real life connection is connected.

Patterning

- Patterning, on the other hand involves process of 'identifying, describing and repeating'.

- In relation to what my tutorial group have done in our first workshop, we created some patterning using the beads and the vehicles shape toys provided. First and foremost, we decided on what attributes of patterning that we wish to create. We decided to create simple pattering which is based on the shape and colour of the beads.


- Students will first need to identify what repeated attribute is used in the pattern. This is the point where 'identifying' process happens. As soon as the students identify the repeated attributes in the pattern, 'describing' process occurs. In describing the arrangement of the beads, a child is promoting his analysis and reasoning skills by making judgement and come out with justification of the pattern ; for this beads, beads he same shape, but different colour is repeated, twice.

-For the second part of our pattern, we decided to create pattern in which it is increasing in number. As shown in the picture below, the number of vehicles increases by two, starting from 1, up to 1+2 =3, then 3+2=5. In doing this activity, the teacher can ask the students to guess what number will come out eventually.

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