EDMA262 Assessment 2

Big ideas This week was all about the concept of measurement. Measurement is of important significance in our everyday lives, with Reys et a. (2020), identifying measurement as the concept from the primary mathematics curriculum that is used the most directly in students’ lives. We use measurement for areas such as time, temperature and money, and other real-life situations, like finding the number of tiles needed to cover a bathroom. The concept of any measurement is counting units. Teaching sequence for measurement: 1. Identify the concept and make sure students understand the attribute they are measuring e.g. area, length 2. Choose an appropriate unit of measurement for the attribute being measured 3. Measure object using chosen unit 4. Record the number of units Concept A focus on length: This concept, like any other measurement concept, needs to be taught using the 4-step teaching sequence mentioned above. An appropriate unit of measurement should be chosen based on the stage of t...

Big Ideas The content this week extends on the pre-algebra and patterning from week 9. As we learnt last week, algebra is an ability to understand relationships and patterns, with an algebraic equation being a statement of a relationship. Algebra is the most abstract thinking of number understanding, and helps develop critical thinking skills. As problems, patterns and relations are an essential part of mathematics at school, it is important students can succeed in algebra to assist them in further developing their problem-solving skills and logic and reasoning (Reys et al., 2020). Concept, Skill or Strategy An understanding of the concept of equality is crucial for success in algebra. As covered in week 9, the equal sign is something that can cause misconceptions among students, as many believe it means “the answer” to an equation (Reys et al., 2020). As a teacher, I need to make sure my students understand that equality is a state of balance between both sides of the equal sign. Two ...

Big ideas For many, algebra revolves around equations and finding ‘x.’ This is exactly the image I used to have in my head when I thought of algebra. This week, we learnt that even some of the youngest learners are using early algebraic thinking, as algebra is the ability to understand relationships and patterns, with algebraic equations being statements of relationships (Jamieson-Proctor, 2021). I was initially hesitant to engage with this week’s topic as algebra is something I really struggled with in high school. Due to this, my belief before participating in this unit was that algebra was something that was only introduced in high school (except for simple missing element equations e.g. 5 + ? = 11).  Concept, Skill or Strategy The patterning skills we were introduced to in week 6 that also apply to early algebra are: 1. Recognising the pattern (What’s happening?) 2. Describing the pattern (What’s repeating?) 3. Repeating or copying the pattern (need to be able to see the relati...

Big ideas Place Value (PV) was further explored this week, with a large focus being put on the teaching sequence for PV concepts. PV for numbers above 9 is useful for many mathematical purposes, including helping us form a picture when we’re solving problems, and helping us use estimation. As a teacher, I need to ensure I am providing students with opportunities to picture large numbers in and outside the classroom, as it is just as important for older students in primary school to understand the concept of large numbers as it is for young learners to understand the concept of numbers less than 10. Concept, Skill or Strategy As we learnt in week 7, PV is actually made up of 8 concepts. This week, we learnt about a sequence of 8 steps to teach PV: The first step is particularly important as there may be confusion around trading e.g. 10 ones for 1 ten. This week I found it really interesting when one of our own teachers reflected on her teaching of mathematics, when she once told a stude...

Big Ideas This week in lectures and tutorials, we covered a large array of content. We firstly looked at number sense, numeration and mental computation. Numeration and mental computation was linked back to our content from weeks 2-5, and we were reminded of the big 7 thinking strategies across addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  We then moved on to place value, which I found to be a much larger concept than I expected. This week I learnt that there is not just the ‘ones, tens, hundreds, thousands’ or the base 10 system. I found it really interesting to learn about other bases such as base 5 and base 3, and to see them modelled for me, as I was only ever taught the base 10 system at school. As a teacher, I will need to ensure I emphasise the importance of place value to my students and incorporate it into every area of mathematics. This is because place value is “one of the cornerstones of our number system” and is part of all work with whole numbers, the metric sy...

Big Ideas This week was all about pre-number concepts, that is, concepts children must understand before they formally start the study of number. They include understanding number relationships, attributes, patterning, counting principles and subitizing. The Early Years Learning Framework (DEEWR, 2010) highlights the importance of these numeracy capabilities as they relate to outcome 5, “children are effective communicators” (p.22). As numeracy capabilities are recognised as important aspects of communication and are vital for successful learning across the curriculum, these pre-number concepts are the “powerful mathematical ideas children need to become numerate” (DEEWR, 2010, p.41). Concept: Patterning Concept: When a child can describe what patterning is Skill: When they start doing it and making patterns While all 6 of the pre-number concepts are vital for children to understand the further study of number, the concept of patterning stands out as it combines together all of the p...