Teaching Maths

These are simple questions that every kids learn. But not many people know that we have been taking these questions for granted. Really! A professor brought some light to me when I attended a class on Teaching of Algebra. Not many people realised that these simple questions are a bunch of abstract symbols.

I have tried teaching Kay Maths since she was around 1 year old. She has been learning very well. But I have been having a hard time. I find Maths very difficult to teach as there are very limited resources around. In my opinion, most books in Singapore tend to be very old school and a bit too abstract for young children. I like my kids to be able feel and explore Maths with their own hands. I particularly like those resources created for Montessori education. But they are really expensive to purchase.

What do I do? I rely on my imagination, my training and whatever cheap (or free) resources that I can grab hold of.

I strongly believe that what our kids learn depends on what and how we teach them. The learning outcome for really depends on the way it is being taught.

This is such a long blog… I shall stop here. Stay tuned as I will be sharing some of my Maths lesson soon.

Preview of what I want to share next:
1. Introducing compliments of 5
2. Concrete to Abstract Maths
3. Mental Calculation

Counting Dots

I gave both Kay and Russ the same worksheet. But they ‘completed’ the worksheet in different ways due to their capabilites.

For Kay, after a simple explanation, she was asked what numbers should be written in the boxes below. She was able to understand the connection between the dots and the boxes below and managed to get all the answers right. As she can only write 0 to 3, I held her hand to write all the answers except for the number 10, underlined red. She wrote that one herself.

For Russ, I brought his focus on the boxes with dots and asked him to identify the box with 1 dot, followed by 2 dots and so on. He is able to identify the boxes with up to 3 dots. Then, I guided him to count the dots in the other boxes.
Verdict: 8/10 correct!