Happy Math Monday!
Raise your hand if you’ve had a
student say any of the following:
“I don’t get it!”
“I hate math.”
“I can’t do math.”
“This is too hard.”
“I give up!”
Ugh!
The struggle is real. I hope you
enjoy this blog hop and take away a couple of ideas and/or resources to help
improve student learning and enjoyment of mathematics.
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I recently left my amazing full-time
job with awesome coworkers and students to steal back some time at home with my
9 month old son. To stay involved in
education, I am so excited to share that I am now working as a part-time math
interventionist with fifth and eighth graders.
I have always taught 8th
grade, but 5th grade was a little bit of culture shock for me! Every day – wait no – every period is SO
different. I work with a variety of
types of learners, but the overwhelming majority are kids who “don’t like math.”
Day one – with no preparation – I was
given a group of eighth graders to launch a new remediation program with. I sat at a round table with a group of
teenagers as unmotivated as they come. I
glanced at the packet on equivalent fractions that I was given to “cover” with
them, took a deep breath, and did my best to get these students excited about
fractions.
That day we got the work done, but I
left there buzzing with thoughts. These
students hate fractions. We are covering
fifth grade math. They never really
learned it the first, second, third, etc time around. And they want me to do… worksheets???
I checked in with the teacher to see
if it was okay if I supplemented with some of my own resources, then made my
way home at the end of the day, head spinning with ideas.
That night I sat down and made OMG Equivalent Fractions for these kids. I
needed to make learning fun and interesting!
Math is cool! Math can be
entertaining! We can learn and have fun
at the same time. J
I am so happy to say that the
following day, these “too cool for school” eighth grade girls and boys were so
excited to play a game modeled after a childhood favorite. I played with several other groups and each
time they loved it and asked for more!
Most importantly, they were learning the concept!
As classroom teachers, we need to
make sure students have a balance of traditional learning and discovery-based,
hands-on, interactive fun. If you’re
having trouble motivating your students to “do the work,” try meeting them in
the middle. You can find tons of card
games, scavenger hunts, BINGO games, and more at my store, Free to Discover.
Check out the links below to read
posts by other amazing secondary math teachers!
Subscribe to the Free to Discover blog here:
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