Math Curriculum Guides

After looking at each curriculum guide and getting a glimpse of the resources available for teachers to use I was surprised. I was surprised by the fact that there are tons of resources provided for teachers such as books that can be used for read-alouds (especially for primary), and even pre-written quizzes/tests (more for elementary), things I had been completely unaware of.

My group started with the Kindergarten curriculum, which I really enjoyed. There were a lot of books dealing and connecting with the SCOs which I found really cool. I absolutely love to read, and read to children, so tying in books to help teach them concepts of math, I feel is great and it's also a great opportunity to tie in SCOs of language arts. 

As my group progressed through the tables and the curriculum guides for each grade, we found that the jump from Kindergarten to grade one, was big (when looking at the books given for resources). When we then looked at grade two, there was even a greater jump from grade one! The reading level of the material given as resources, was very high! I work at the Newfoundland and Labrador Learning Disability Association as a tutor, tutoring children with learning disabilities, therefore I know the reading levels fairly well. To give a child in grade two, one of the resource books, I feel would be extremely overwhelming for a student because the reading level seemed fairly high (for a student in grade two). Not only that, but not every student is at the same reading level, which would put some students at a disadvantage and would be incredibly unfair because the student may do well with math, but struggles with reading, therefore wouldn't understand the math.

As we continued on, i noticed that the curriculum and resources got less colourful and more bland and more problem-practice oriented, which made me sad; why can't grade sixes for example, have colourful and interesting books to read that relates to their math curriculum as well? It reminded me of when I went through elementary school, all we ever seemed to do was exercises in our exercise book. I would have loved to have been given the opportunity to read fun and interesting books dealing with math concepts and learn that way as well! For our Children's Literature course, we write blog posts as well, and this week's posting was to find a book that related to math or science concepts that could be used with our Newfoundland and Labrador curriculum. I found a great book series called The Tales of Sir Cumference that deals with math concepts taught in grades K-6. The book I chose to write my blog on was all about angles and followed a character named "Radius" on a fun adventurous journey. This book would be perfect for students in grade six because it deals with concepts of angles they are learning, and even though it's a picture book, it is one that is enjoyable for all ages. I feel that books like this series would also be useful in elementary grades and should be used by more teachers!

Overall, I thought this activity was a great activity to get exposed to the grades K-6 math curriculum, to see how the math evolves and the curriculum changes, and to see the resources that are available to teachers.  

YouCubed!!

After Looking at the YouCubed website I was impressed. Not only does it reach out to teachers with resources and materials to help them teach math in an easier way for students to learn and understand, but it also has plenty of material for parents/guardians to help as well! 

This site is devoted to teachers and parents/guardians to help them understand that children need to be taught math in a way that illuminates stress and anxiety and having a mindset where they think they aren't smart enough to complete a problem. I learned through watching the videos and reading the articles posted, that all children can achieve at high levels; everyones brain grows and expands when it learns new information. Previous ideas about students' ability levels can effect a students math performance; if a child thinks they aren't good at math because they don't understand or cannot complete a certain number of problems as quickly as others, they will preform at the level they think they are. In this scenario, the performance would be poor. Students need to understand that mistakes and struggling are important because that means you're learning and your brain is growing. If students know how to complete every single problem, that means they aren't learning and aren't being challenged. A big idea for teachers, parents/guardians, and students to understand is that math should not be associated with speed and time constraints. This can cause a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety on students because they learn to believe that if they can't complete the problems in a certain amount of time, they're not good enough, when this isn't true at all. Another thing this website discussed is what teachers say to students, greatly impacts their performance levels. Giving positive feedback and letting the student know that you believe in them, gives students motivation to do their best.

I really loved the article for parents, that talked about ways to encourage students to complete math, as well as ways to motivate them. As a parent, you want to help your child with what they are struggling with, this article explains that in order to help that child, don't complete the hard parts of the problem for them. Instead, you help guide them through the problem. If they figure a problem out, you shouldn't reply with, "wow, you're so smart," because in the future, if the child struggles with figuring something out, they will think, "hmm, maybe i'm not so smart." So instead of using the word "smart" you could just praise the student by saying, "wow, great job! I knew you could do it!" As a future teacher, these kinds of things would be helpful to let parents/guardians know, as they help their children with homework.

YouCubed also offers games for students from kindergarten to grade five, to play. I thought this was a very useful resource, because I myself have never heard of any of these games and I think they would be fun to play with friends, not just in school but in the home environment as well!

I believe that the resources this site has to offer to help teachers and parents/guardians alike are unexpendable to help teach math to the current and future generations.