Yesterday's session was fun and enjoyable, much to my surprise. To me, I have always felt that Maths lessons are boring and heavily loaded with calculations and problem sums. As a result, I did not really anticipate the start of this course, much less having great expectations of it.
But I was wrong. Totally wrong! My impression of teaching Maths has changed. My knowledge towards mathematical terms and concepts have also been reinforced and widen. After yesterday's session, I learnt that in order to create a mathematical environment for students, teachers must pose purposeful problems to them and allow children the freedom to explore the different ways in solving the problem. Teachers must also be flexible and open minded towards the different solutions that students are able to come up with through their critical thinking, brainstorming and communication with one another.
Most importantly, I was inspired by the simplicity of materials that teachers could use in order to teach maths; all we require is a tinge of creativity and viola! We could be on our way to discovering the different concepts in Mathematics. I have learnt that there is no definite solution for a math problem and students need to understand that too. Maths is an curriculum integrated with language and other areas of development, thus teaching and learning maths can also be through a holistic approach.
Despite being physically tired after a day's work, I actually find myself being engaged by the hands on activities like a child and being very motivated to search for the solutions to the problems posed to us in class. I believe that that should be the kind of response that we teachers should impose on our students to create an interesting and inspirational Math learning journey for them.
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