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My Approach to Teaching Mathematics
I have been one of those students who did not have any fear towards the subject. However, I did not share any passion for the subject either. I slowly started to withdraw from practicing Mathematics as a subject during the final years of my university.
I recently found interest and curiosity towards the subject when I saw Jodo Gyan's approach towards it. Their approach made teaching Math very stimulating for the teacher as well as the students. I was inspired by that. I began thinking for approaches that would make sense to the 11 year old young minds. The approach that I will follow most frequently, would be concretization of abstract concepts. I will try and offer concrete experiences to the students so that they could refer to those experiences as the concept unfolds. This way, the students have a strong fundamental understanding of a concept before moving into the dept of it. I witnessed this strategy receiving a great response through the fraction kit (Cake story), decimal kit (Gold Story), Ganit Mala etc.
Another approach that got the students get curious is establishing a relevance to the real world. The concept of signed numbers was introduced with a story about loan and cash. This way the students went back to the story when solving mathematical equations in signed numbers.
The next approach that I am practicing in my class is to bring in the mathematical concept with very small numbers. And then move to bigger numbers. I could see this approach work in my classroom.
Students were not able to calculate the net wealth of a person who had a cash of Rs.178.80 and a loan of Rs.213. After trying different approaches with number lines, I tried asking the same question with single digit numbers: I have Rs.2 cash and I owe my friend Rs.3. What would be my net wealth. Students immediately said - your loan is more that the cash by Re.1. So your Net Wealth is a loan of Re.1. I asked them to apply the same strategy in solving the problem with bigger numbers and they were able to do it. So sometimes, simplifying the numbers will also help them see the concept more clearly.
Keeping all these ideas in my I created a unit plant for Ratio and Proportion and this is how it turned out:
Teaching of Mathematics in Online and Physical Space
I could see I was able to help the students much better when I was in the physical space. Math is a subject that is heavily dependent on strategies and approach. There could be different approaches to solving a problem, and I as a teacher need to focus on that rather than just checking if the student got the right answer not. When the students show their answers that are incorrect in online classes I had to quickly make some assumptions: Either the student did not understand the concept or the child understood the concept but made a calculation error before getting to it. These challenges were eliminated in the physical space as one quick walk around the class would help me get an idea of which of the students understood the concept and which ones didn't
My Approach to Teaching Language:
From the time that I had spent in the classrooms, I could notice one of the strategies that came out to be very successful was teacher modelling of a concept as we introduce it to the students. This approach helps in language because a lot of ideas around literacy could be ambiguous unless it is shown how to use it with the help of an example. As students listen to the teachers line of thought as she talks about specific examples, it brings to focus the literary device that the teacher is talking about. This way the students could also make connections to the literary pieces that they have read and share the examples and non-examples for the literary device.
I have also understood that the curiosity of learning a language grows immensely when there is a platform to communicate different opinions. Starting from discussing the theme of a story to finding out the character motivations, every unit in English had beautifully unfolded when there was a time given for students to discuss and challenge each other's ideas. A language concept is usually introduced through a story read aloud. The students then work on the story by applying the new elements of language that are being introduced.
After they had applied their learnings in written format, students either share their responses in a group or in a whole class discussion. During these discussions, I could notice their ideas and perspectives evolve as they build on each other's responses and ideas.
Another important strategy towards language learning would be allot maximum portion of time to have the students practice their concepts and literary devices rather than spending the time front loading information. In my classroom practice, I have witnessed more time given to students on independent reading and journaling. This has helped them build a huge repository of books that they had read, which eventually brings about new medium to experience and practice the literary devices.
Here is a unit plan that I made for Identifying Themes and Social Issues:
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