Post Five, Take homes and Extra Credit homework

Our take home assignments in this class have been very interesting. They are supposed to be elementary school questions, we are supposed to do the work and explain the problem. Come at it from every possible angle and address every possible question we could foresee a student asking. My first problem is that I do not feel these questions are elementary school questions. Even taking into consideration that elementary school does include sixth grade, I think most of these problems are too difficult for elementary school. I feel most elementary school kids would be very confused if I gave them these take home questions and told them to work it out. I have given these questions to a few of my elementary aged children that I babysit and children at my daycare and most of them had no clue. This upsets me because we are supposed to be dealing with elementary school aged children.

Other than doing the work, we are supposed to explain every little detail of the problems. I understand that we as future teachers need to know how to explain work and how to come at it from different point of views because children learn differently. I do believe you should teach each topic two different ways in order to give more students the opportunity to succeed. What bothers me is that how are we supposed to answer questions that have not been asked of us? Teachers do not answer every detailed question unless it has been asked by a student. If no one is asking how can you foresee every possible question. I also feel that some of my explanations were full and very well thought out. Somehow I would still get points off. My papers were always four or even five pages long. How long can these explanations possible be? Seven Pages for a homework assignment? I am just not sure what else to do to improve my grade.

The extra credit math homework is also another thing that puzzles me in this class. Why is the homework that should be graded and we should see our mistakes on extra credit? And why is it not due until the day of the test? Wouldn't it be more useful if we actual had it due every class and we went over it quickly in class? Therefore anybody who did it and tried could get credit, and it would guarantee that we were practicing and doing the homework throughout the whole chapter. I understand that as a student you can do this on your own but I feel making the homework that directly relates to our test information required would be extremely helpful. It would give everyone credit, well everyone that did their homework and give us an opportunity to ask questions in class about it.

I just feel that homework such as the take homes or the blogs is a lot of work and takes up a lot of our time. When it isn't directly relating to the material we are being tested on. Hopefully the blogs and take homes really help our grades but I'm not sure.

Verizon Phone Call Post Four

After listening to the Verizon Phone call I am surprised that these workers could even qualify for Verizon jobs. I am shocked that Verizon allowed this to go on, allowed people so ignorant to work in their stores. It makes Verizon as a company look bad, I am sure many people began scanning thier Verizon bills and checking every math problem. Especially because you would think they would have to deal with questions like this on a daily basis. If you work in billing you need to know how to bill. Verizon should have prep classes and training to prevent situations like this. The women is even so ignorant to say "It's a difference of opinion" when really it's just simple math facts. How do these workers even actively live in the world if they dont know the difference between a whole cent and a whole dollar. Children 10 year olds, or even 5 year olds understand the difference between cents and dollars. How could you possible add .002 cents and end up with such a large whole dollar amount. One cent is small and .002 cents are even smaller!

This ties into our decimals chapter because if the decimal was in a different spot the number would have been different. To properly write one cent we have 1.0 cents or 2.0 cents which would be two pennies. For whole dollars it would read $1.0 for one dollar or $2.0 for two dollars. We also need to read the labels, which we went over in our decimal chapter. Yes, these two numbers do look the same on paper, until you read the labels. Than they become two different numbers entirely. One is dealing with two thousandths of a penny opposed to two thousandths of a dollar. They are both two thousandths of something but the something is different. One for whole dollars and one for whole cents.

It is so important to teach this in elementary school because if we don't we could wind up with tons of people who dont know the difference. After elementary school you can start buying things on your own, if you are trying to buy something and don't know the difference between cents and whole dollars than someone can easily take advantage of you. In elementary school is where we should learn the basics of our life skills. I would definitely say that this is a basic life skill. If we don't teach it in elementary school than the student could get to middle school or high school and have this thrown at them. They become even more confused because they have never been taught this before. It becomes a bigger barrier than it ever had to be.

Hopefully, Verizon will learn and get their workers the proper training they need. Maybe parents will see this phone call and learn to teach their children proper money math. Just the frustration that you can hear from the man in the phone call should be enough to imply how much we need to teach children and obviously even some adults proper math.

Math and Children

      Math is a hard subject for kids. I believe one way to avoid mathophobia is to help young kids build their basic skills to the fullest. Once you have a base of your basic skills it is easy to build onto them. But if you fall behind at such a young age it will be hard to catch up. You will always fill like you are struggling and not be able to learn new material. I believe this is where mathophobia comes from. There are many ways we can help children learn their basic math skills. Math games, repetition, extra help, math flashcards, homework and math websites are ways to help kids. One math trick that I never learned as a child is a technique called touch points, this helps children with addition and subtraction. Touch points are points placed on the numbers in strategic places. A 2 would have a point at the top of the two and the bottom of the two. If a child was adding 8+2 he would start with eight and count each point on the number 2 to get the answer 10. These touch points are to help the children to avoid counting on their fingers. It makes them look at the numbers and actually count to get their answer. With subtraction the technique is the same. The children count backwards using their touchpoints. If the problem is 11-6, the 6 would have its strategically placed touch points on it. The children would start at 11 and point to each touchpoint and say 10,9,8 and so on. Finally arriving at their answer of 11-6=5. I really like this technique, I learned it in my field work that I am currently doing at Sheaffe Road Elementary. The children really seem to be benefitting from this technique. Every morning the Children in my class do a full worksheet of touch point problems. This backs up my theory of repetition helping build math skills. I am seeing a improvement in these kids math skills day by day.
          Math games also help children with math in many ways. It helps them not be as scared of math because it makes math fun. It also helps them learn as they are having fun. One game you could play is called block sharing. You give each child a sheet with blank math problems on it. Every child also has a certain number of blocks. The children must go around the classroom until they fill their page with every combination of addition and subtraction problems with the numbers 1-10 by trading blocks. The kids get to walk around, talk to one another, and work together. The teacher should encourage the kids to help each other, if someone finishes they should be walking around giving other kids positive help and encouragment. The children should be fully supervised during this process because a bunch of young kids walking around a classroom can easily get distracted.
         Math websites are very helpful to children. They are interactive and can work out the problem for the child if he or she gets it wrong. It can repeat problems that the child gets wrong and help them implement the techniques. This gives the child multiple times to work on the same problem and perfect their skills. There are many websites and you can find them by simply googling them. Parents can use them with their kids or teachers can use them with their whole classroom. All of these math tools can help children with their math skills.

Post 2 Professions and math

       Children always ask when are we going to use any of this math in real life? Most teachers ignore it, maybe because they don't have an anwser for their curious students. There are many ways teachers can choose to anwser this question for thier students. They could teach the children that the math work itself such as fractions or probablity may not be specifically used but the thinking principals behind it will be. Math is a critically thinking subject, in life we need to be problem solvers and therefore math can give us the background for this. A teacher could also approach this question from the students at a different angle. Starting off with when the students grow up they want to make lots of money. Than the teacher can ask how do they expect to manage this money? What if your spending $500 a week in grocery's but at the end of the month you don't have enough money to pay your heating bill? As adults we have to manage our money so we have enough for all of our bills. This takes a lot of addition, subtraction and even multiplication. If you have a weekly bill in order to find out how much money you will need for one month you must multiply the weekly bill by four weeks. Without the use of math many adults could be missing bills simply because they couldn't manage their money. They didn't have the important math skills that we as elementary students are learning now.

            Another way we can tell the students how they will use math in real life is by telling them that depending on their occupation as they become adults they may use a lot of the math. We can make a list of different jobs that require math so the students can visually see how important it is. We can even ask the students what they want to be when they grow up and relate each occupation to math skills. Children say things like; I am going to be a mechanic they dont use math, or I am going to be a sports broadcaster, they don't use math. But in actuality these students are incorrect. Almost every profession uses math skills or math thinking processes in some way. Some professions that use math could surprise your students and even yourself. One job using math is a car stereo installer, this falls under the category of a mechanic. When they are installing the stereo they must know things such as what are decibels, different size gauge wires, what size hole do you need to fit a 10in speaker in, and what size fuses do I need? All of these questions are answered by doing basic math skills. Another job that you use math in that could be surprising to students is a sports broadcaster. The broadcaster must figure out  batting averages, how many bases did the last player steal, what the score is and how much time is left in the game. A radio DJ uses math in his career also. Explain to your students that a radio DJ are the people they listen to on the radio probably everyday. They use math because they need to know things like how many 4 minute songs can they fit into a 30 minute music block and when is the next commercial. They need to know how many minutes until the next commercial so they know how long they need to talk for or if they have time for another song. These are a few professions that use math everyday that would surprise students. Other professions using math are pilots, engineer, architect, software engineer, computer programmer, astronaut, and the list goes on and on. This shows math is used in the real world, not only in your own personal life but in many different professions that could surprise students.
The websites I used in the articles http://weusemath.org/careers and www. stephencarr.com/mathjobs.html

Post 1 Mathophobia

Mathophobia is when people are scared of math without having true reason for it. When people walk into a math class and automatically groan or complain that they are terrible at math and will never be able to get through the class. This is setting yourself up for failure and we need to have a positive attitude no matter what class we walk into. As an over all population we are known as mathophobics. I do suffer from this because math was never my strong point, I had difficulty with many math classes including my sophomore year of high school math which I failed not once but twice. I believe I suffer from mathophobia because in elementary school I never fully got the basics of math down. Math is a building subject and without basic skills you quickly fall behind and than give up. I believe that the majority of people suffering from Mathophobia have this same problem with basic skills. I'm hoping that this class will help me with basic skills and before I begin teaching I know I will have to work hard on perfecting my basic skills. As an elementary teacher I would help my students to learn there basic skills properly in order to hopefully begin eliminating mathophobia for future students and future Americans.

Math is very important and as adults there is no way to avoid doing math. We need it for banking, shopping, budgeting and everyday common tasks. Because math is used so much even on a basic level it is surprising that adults do not over come their mathophobia. How adults get around using math is by relining on others, calculators or just giving up in general. Many adults wouldn't even know if they had been over charged on a bill or under tipping a waitress because they are ignoring the numbers all together. Children see their mother's, father's, or guardians afraid of math and therefore do not get support on their homework and they to have mathophobia.  

The videos we watched relating to homophobia showed how the world views math. The carton Kim Possible had an entire episode on the "villains" of math, this has the possibility of scaring kids of math from a very young age. This could have a lasting effect on the children without them even realizing it, it is singling out math as a scary subject. The "Who wants to a millionaire" show with Patricia Heaton as a quest relates directly to mathophobia. A question comes up about math and before the question is complete she freaks out and refuses to answer. Patricia is a grown adult and this shows us that even adults suffer from mathophobia.

As a teacher I will aspire to help students over come mathophobia and hopefully begin to end mathophobia.