Mathematics

I believe as teacher's we need to teach and encourage children to love mathematics. Math is a very important element of everyday life and children should be able to see it as such.  They need to understand maths and apply it to the world around them.  To get children to see the relevance of mathematics to the world, instead of just doing problems that have no relevance to life, make real connections for them. This means use manipulatives so that children can see how it relates instead of just doing problems on paper.

I believe maths is also an active learning process.  Students need hands-on activities as well as skill practices.  Manipulatives that pertain to the lesson are especially helpful for children to visualize the concepts that they are talking about.   You begin with the concrete, hands-on, conceptual ideas, and then move to a bridging activity, which leads to the final abstract, procedural concepts. This is what I base my mathematics teaching on, and believe that doing this, children will gain an understanding of the maths they are learning and see the relevance it has in life. From this children will learn to love maths and gain an appreciation for mathematics.

• Took TEMS324-17C mathematics option paper in third-year. Lecturer Judith Mills