Friday 2 September 2011

My last day in Math class…But DEFINITELY not my last encounter with math!

Today, Dr Yeap shared about assessments. I have always thought that assessment is only in a form of paper and pencil, like those we had during our school times. There was oral but I did not exercise my flexibility to think about doing oral test for math. Why didn’t I think of that??
There are 3 types of assessment tasks:
1.       Paper and pencil test.
2.       Oral test.
3.       Group and individual test.
Another thing that was pointed out was assessing children on the concept to time.

I believe everyone did experience drawing the ‘long’ and ‘short’ hands on the clocks face!!!! Hahaha was that the right thing to do???? DEFINITELY NOT, if your objective is for the children to be able to tell time! It’s more of whether the child can identify the ‘long’ and ‘short’ hands on the clock!

An activity that we did was to come out with a box that fits 15 kidney beans. I find this activity very fun! I saw one small box made by my classmates but it could fit more than 30 kidney beans!  
Thing to note: ** Don’t underestimate the amount of kidney beans a small box can hold!
Let’s go for a trip to…. THE MRT STATION!!!!

Dr Yeap gave us a task of measuring the height of one floor to another in the MRT. Honestly, I was like “WHAT?? Do we really have to do that??? How do we do that with only a ruler measuring 15cm??!!!

But we did it any way…
Here’s how we calculated…
The first set of staircase = 14  steps
The subsequent 3 sets of staircases = 16 x 3 = 48 steps.
The height of 1 step to another = 14.5 cm
THE HEIGHT OF ONE FLOOR TO ANOTHER = (14+48) x 14.5 = 899cm.

Word of the day: Oxymoron (the sound of it is already funny) – two words that contradicts, for example, living dead and awfully beautiful.
A key take-away:
How to make sure the butterfly cannot fly? Go help the butterfly out of its cocoon! Then the butterfly will not be able to fly.
It is the same with children. Give the children freedom to explore and don’t always assume and provide them with answers. They will definitely not survive, just like when you help a butterfly…

I had a great time exploring with Math in Dr Yeap class. I understand that I will be seeing him again in another module. Hope it will be as fun and captivating as this math module
It was an eye opener to discover and learn new things in this math class.
JUST WANNA WISH YOU A HAPPY TEACHER’S DAY!!!