8P29 Post 10

We’re coming to the end of the year in our first math course of teacher’s college and this week we worked on what I’m pretty sure is the last unit we’ll be working on: data management and probability. The next few weeks will be on assessment and lesson/unit planning, or at least that’s my prediction based on what I’ve looked at in the syllabus.

Data management and probability is a relatively short unit compared to some of the other ones, such as number sense and numeration. I think the intention in my placement is for the data management unit to only be 2-3 weeks. Nevertheless, this unit is a great opportunity for your class to let loose and have a little fun, because there are many games you can play to help demonstrate probability concepts.

One such game we did in class on Friday was the horse race game to show the most likely dice rolls when rolling 2 dice. Students have to set up a racetrack (graph) numbering all the possible dice outcomes from 2 to 12. Each number represents a different horse. To make things interesting, have students pick a “horse” they think will win. Students than have to roll the dice and the result is the horse that moves forward e.g. roll an 8, then horse 8 gets a tick on the racetrack. The first horse to get to 7 (or some other agreed-upon number) is the winner. Students will notice that most of the time, 7 will be the winner, or very close to it. From there, you can launch into a lesson demonstrating why this is the case. I am definitely going to use this activity in my placement classroom because I think the students will get really into it.

Anthony92931. "Suffolk Downs Horse Race." August 1 2007.
Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_racing#/media/File:Suffolk_Downs_horse_racing.JPG

 Another reason data management and probability is fun is because students get to do surveys and record their collected data. Students can be creative in these activities and make up a survey on anything they’d like to ask their schoolmates about e.g. music tastes, video game, eye colour. It gets them up and moving, which is a welcome reprieve from sitting still in their seats all day.

Something that is important as a mathematics teacher is varying the activities that you do in the classroom. There is a time and place for students to sit and answer practice questions at their desk individually, but there is also a time to see math in action, though games and tasks like the ones mentioned above. I feel very lucky in my placement because the students seem pretty pumped to do math problems each day. I’m not sure if that is unique to this class, or if 9 and 10-year-olds are always this excitable. I really don’t remember cheering after completing math problems as a class, but now I wish that we had done that every year of math, even in high school! That enthusiasm gives me flexibility in what I can do in the classroom.  

"Yay math!"
"Children Cheering." Retrieved from http://goo.gl/DqRu5i