Making the Connection

In any Math Curriculum meeting or in-service we often hear about helping our students make connections. An area that become challenging in trying to help our students understanding the connection between what they know and the problems they are presented with.  We just recently reviewed our schools CRT results and the elementary report revealed to us that the area of Connections and Representations was low compared to the district and province, therefore; we need to increase this number. How do we do this as Math teachers?

The NL Mathematics Curriculum guide describes one of the main goals of Mathematics education as: “make connections between Mathematics and its applications” and “When mathematical ideas are connected to each other or to real-world phenomena, students begin to view mathematics as useful, relevant and integrated. Learning mathematics within contexts and making connections relevant to learners can validate past experiences and increase student willingness to participate and be actively engaged”. (Mathematics Grade 5 Curriculum Guide, Dept of Ed, 2009)  This area is also one of the items that are to be given a grade level 1- 5 in the K-6 report cards. Indicating to teachers of Mathematics that there should be a level of importance placed on this area.

In Schoenfeld’s article Good Teaching, Bad Results, there were many areas that he spoke about that struck a chord with me, my schooling, and my teaching. I look at his example about the “key word procedure” in problem solving. I as a student and as a teacher have used this method in helping students look for words that help them figure out what they have to so in the problem. I even went as far in my first few years of teaching to post on the wall key words for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.  These keys words helped students focus on what they had to do to get the correct answer. I also saw responses like the articles referred to like “the number of buses needed is ’31 remainder 12’.”  These type problems have to presented to students making them understand that ‘math’ is just part of the problem, the algorithm is a way to help you solve the problem, but always ask yourself ‘Does my answer make sense? Is my answer possible?’

I’m going to leave you with a quote to think about as you take a little more time to think about making connections in your Mathematics lesson Planning.

Angela

“Because the learner is constantly searching for connections on many levels, educators need to orchestrate the experiences from which learners extract understanding.… Brain research establishes and confirms that multiple complex and concrete experiences are essential for meaningful learning and teaching” (Caine and Caine, 1991, p.5).