Spinner Games to Teach Probability

Data Management and Probability 

Focuses on:

1. Collecting Data 

2. Data Relationships 

3. Probability 

Curriculum Expectations: 

- Grade 4: collecting and organizing discrete data; reading and displaying data using stem-and-leaf plots and double bar graphs; understanding median; comparing two related sets of data; predicting the frequency of an outcome; investigating how the number of repetitions of a probability experiment affects the conclusion drawn (p. 64). 

- Grade 5:collecting and organizing discrete and continuous data; displaying data using broken-line graphs; sampling data from a population; understanding mean; comparing two related sets of data; representing probability using fractions (p. 76).

- Grade 6: collecting and organizing discrete and continuous data; displaying data using continuous line graphs; selecting appropriate graphical representations; using continuous line graphs and mean to compare sets of data; finding theoretical probabilities; predicting the frequency of an outcome based on the theoretical probability (p. 86). 

- Grade 7: collecting and organizing categorical, discrete, and continuous data; displaying data in relative frequency tables and circle graphs; identifying bias in data; relating changes in data to changes in central tendency; making inferences based on data; investigating real-world applications of probability; determining the theoretical probability of two independent events (p. 97).

- Grade 8: collecting categorical, discrete, and continuous data; organizing data into intervals; displaying data using histograms and scatter plots; using measures of central tendency to compare sets of data; comparing two attributes using data management tools; comparing experimental and theoretical probabilities; calculating the probability of complementary events (p. 109). 

Teaching about Probability using Spinners

The video describes the probability of each of the cowboys taking road 3 or someplace else. Based on spinners that the cowboys are wearing determines which path they are probably, unlikely, certain or impossible to take. 

Activity: Probability Paths 

For the activity, students should create the spinners for each cowboy represented in the video. Have students spin each spinner 10 times to record the results of the cowboy taking path 3 or someplace else path. Have students discuss in partners what the probability would be for each of the cowboys to take path 3 or to take path someplace else. Get students to discuss in partners why they believe this.

Benefits of Activity 

- Engaging 

- Visual Representation of probability 

- Partners can help struggling students learn from their peers

Challenges of Activity 

- Students might struggle to understand how probability is used in everyday life

- Students might struggle to understand how even though when spinning you get the same number every time in the ten spins if there is another option on the spinner it does not mean that the probability is 100 percent 

References 

AM Crew. 3-D animated Math Probability Spinner Video. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/QpfMwA0z_1Y.  

Benefits of Using Children's Literature in the Math Classroom

Children's Literature and Math?

These two-strands sound complete opposite from each other. Until I saw children's picture books being used to teach math, I was a skeptic myself. 

Activity: Storybook Spaghetti and Meatballs for All 

 The video is a reading of the book Spaghetti and Meatballs for All by Marilyn Burns. This storybook can be used as a tool to teach students about perimeter and area. 

While you read the storybook before reading the ending, pause and get students to try and solve the problem themselves. You can give students manipulatives to help visualize how they will have to arrange the seating plan and tables for everyone to be able to have a seat. 

Ex. Students were given 8 square blocks and given 32 counters to represent the guests. They were told that only one person can fit on each side of the square blocks. Students were allowed to push tables together to help fit everyone. 

Accommodating for Gifted Students 

This problem can be adjusted to accommodate different learning levels in your class. If you have a student who is gifted in math, you can make the problem more challenging for them so that they can still be incorporated into the lesson in class. A way to make it more challenging is by changing the problem for them so that one adult and one child could sit on one side of the square table or telling them that 3 children can fit on one side of the square table. 

Connection to Curriculum

This activity seems to be most appropriate for a grade 5 math class when teaching the measurement strand. Although this activity can be modified to make it more challenging or less challenging for different grade levels. 

Grade 5:

M1: Estimate and record perimeter, area, temperature change, and elapsed time, using a variety of strategies(p.80).

M1.9: Determine through investigation using a variety of tools  and strategies, the relationships between the length and width of a rectangle and its area and perimeter, and generalize to develop the formulas (p. 80).

Benefits of Using Children's Literature to Teach Math 

1. Engagement 

2. Brings meaning to mathematical concepts

3. Gives students a visual to help understand math concepts

Additional Resources 

https://www.mathsthroughstories.org/

https://www.the-best-childrens-books.org/math-for-kids.html

These two sites have a great list of storybooks that you can use to incorporate picture books as a tool to teach mathematical concepts to your students. They also include some activities that can go along with the picture books.

References 

Glenanne Seraceno. (26 Mar 2014). Spaghetti and Meatballs for All. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/lNuhAkMGLPc.

UniofReading. (11 Mar 2019). What if maths was taught through storytelling?. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/x9lW2w1aI0E

Fun Drill Activity

It's Multiplication time! 

 

When I was in school I always dreaded when the teacher mentioned that we would be doing math drills. I could not grasp the concept of solving multiplication and remember having to stay in a recess as I failed my multiplication test. I find that learning math drills are still a dreaded word today for many students. If I mention to my students that they will be learning multiplication in math I hear a lot of sighs across the classroom. There are many activities you can bring into the classroom to turn math drills into fun activities!

Activity: Speed Dating

You are probably thinking "a speed dating game in a math classroom"? You heard me correct, this game is called speed dating but multiplication style. 

How to Play 

For this game, you start with a number. The number I started with is 48. You will have three columns on a piece of paper. My number, my partners' number and multiply them columns. In my number column, you write the number that you started with all the way down. Then you find another person in the class and put their number in my partner's number column. Next, you multiply the two numbers without using a calculator anyway that you want. You compare the number you got to your partners as it will be the same and then you put it in the multiply them column. Once you completed these steps, you move on to another person in the class and repeat the same steps. 

Benefits of Implementing Activity 

- A fun way to learn multiplication 

- Gets students collaborating with other students they may not have before 

- Gets students in engaged

- Students can collaborate to help understand how to solve multiplication 

Negative Aspects of Activity

- Students might not be mature enough to handle the name of the game 

- Students need to understand multiple ways to solve multiplication before they play 

- Students may become discouraged if they get the question wrong and group member doesn't or if their group member solves it faster 

Personal Experience with Activity 

I incorporated this activity in my grade 6 class. The students always do a math drill type of activity in the morning when they first arrive in the class. The students always seem to be disengaged in the activity and I often have to walk around the room and remind them to get back on task. I have a class that is very talkative. I debated implementing this activity because I thought that my class would not be mature enough to handle the title of the game and become distracted by the title. When I incorporated it into the class, at first they started laughing and were off task. I decided to change the rules of the game a little bit and I incorporated gamification. I told the class the first person who completed the activity correctly wins a ticket to be put into the draw for the end of the week. The students loved this and they ended up being engaged in the lesson and enjoyed completing it!

Now when you mention math drills...

Before Miss Mueller's Fun math Activity

Students After Implementing Miss Mueller's Math Activity 

 

Modelling Integers with Manipulatives

Welcome!

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been gaining more confidence in teaching math. I have learned in my math course from the professor and my peers' great activities that I can bring into my future class to teach math in an engaging way. I struggled with learning math as a child, and I always found it to be my least favourite subject. I find that my opinions towards math have been changing, as I find that the math course I am in this semester is one of my favourite classes and every week I find it to be so much fun! This week I will be deconstructing and reflecting on the activity Integer Soup. 

How to Play

1. The educator will provide students with two-colour sided counters or two different coloured counters 

2. The educator will set the scene for the activity and describe how the chef making a soup needs to get the temperature perfect by either adding in heat or making it cool by adding ice cubes. 

3. The educator will designate one colour of the counter to represent heat and the other side of the counter to represent ice. 

4. Then the educator will give the students a question that is either adding integers or subtracting them. 

5. The students will use the counters to model the adding or subtracting of the integers. Positive numbers present heat and negative numbers represent the ice.

Benefits of Using this Activity 

- The Marian Small (2017) in the Making Math Meaningful Text states:

1. Using the notion of temperature helps students visualize the relationship of temperatures below 0 representing cold (the negative numbers), while temperatures above 0 represent warmth (the positive numbers)

2. Counters help students discover the principles of integers 

• The sum of two negative numbers is a positive number 
• The sum of two positive numbers is a positive 

3. Activity is engaging 

4. Using the counters gives students another tool that may help explain the process of solving and adding integers 

Possible Negative Effects of Using Activity 

1. Students may just copy the teacher demonstrating how to use the manipulatives and not understand the process of adding and subtracting integers (Small, 2017).

2. In lecture, I learned that students may become reliant on counters and not understand the principles of integers.

Personal Experience with the Activity 

Overall, I found that this activity helped me become more engaged in learning how to solve integer equations. Although, when I was first given the instructions for the activity I found it confusing when using the counters. I could not understand how to take away counters when you already had a negative integer. Once the professor explained this step, I understood the activity better. I found that the counters were a good option to give students to help them understand the lesson, but I find that I learn integers better by using a line graph. In addition, I find in my placement a lot of the students start to rely on manipulatives when solving their problems. Some of the students will not even attempt to solve a problem until they are allowed to use manipulatives. Also, I noticed that one boy in my grade 6 class, solved a patterning question by using multiplication. I then asked him if I could collect his test and he said that he wasn't done even though he solved the question. He then proceeded to grab counters to help him answer the question he already solved. I found because he was taught how to solve math using the manipulatives, he thought he needed them to solve every question. As a result,  I would use Integer Soup only to get my students to become interested in math and excited to learn how to solve integers. Although, I would also show them before using manipulatives the integer principles. 

Comment Below

I will continue in the next couple of weeks to post about my experience learning new theories or activities. Please comment below if you have used this activity in your class before and how it turned out! 

References

Joseph Thompson. (28 Oct 2013). Integer Soup-Subtracting Integers. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/4-eaIuCM530

Small, M. (2017). Making math meaningful to Canadian students, K-8. Nelson Education. 

Changing Students' Mindsets Towards Math

These past 3 weeks of my math course...

Before I started this course, I was very nervous. I would always consider myself as being not good at math. I struggled with completing a lot of the questions on the pre-math assessment. I felt ashamed of how little math I knew on the assessment. The image below represents my score on the pre-assessment on Vretta. I came into the course with the belief that I would be a bad math teacher. I felt that I would lead my students into failure with not understanding mathematics myself.

Pre-Assessment Score of Vretta Math Test 

Changed Learner Forever!

Week one of my math course 8P29 changed my perception on how I view myself as a learner in mathematics. The professor Rebecca Bunz changed my perception of how math should be taught. She made me realize that I do not have to be good at something to be a good teacher. The first thing that I have taken out of these last couple of weeks in the course is that everyone can succeed in math. The article Setting Up Positive Classroom Norms in Math Class to Promote a Growth Mindset by Jo Boaler http://www.youcubed.org/wp-content/uploads/Positive-Classroom-Norms2.pdf helped me to realize in order to be a good math teacher I have to start by changing my own beliefs how I view myself as a math learner. This article encourages teachers to promote a growth mindset in math by changing people’s philosophies towards math. For example, instead of fostering that I am not good at math, changing that belief to “everyone can learn math to the highest levels” (Boaler, p. 1). Reflecting on this article made me realize that if I want to foster a growth mindset in my students towards math I have to foster it in myself first. If students hear me say that I am not good at math, they might start believing the same thing about themselves and not attempt to even learn math.

Real-Life Applications and Math  

            

Another thing that I learned these past weeks is the importance of applying real-life examples when teaching math. The YouTube video by A Learning Place a Teaching Place https://youtu.be/TW_RQXWiCFU describes what relational learning is in mathematics. I learned that it teaches the reasons why you are learning a theory of applying certain tools in mathematics. It is important to teach bringing in the relational learning method as I learned it brings value to math and helps develop a growth mindset for learning mathematics. Students instead of not wanting to learn math because they believe that they will never use it outside of school, understand the importance of math and how they will use it every day. When I was in Elementary school, I would always ask why I needed to learn certain steps in math. I was always told by my teachers and parents to stop asking so many questions and that it should not matter because I just need to memorize the formula for the test. This made me feel that it was not important to learn math. I realized later when I got older knowing the basics of math is vital in completing day to day tasks. For example, pay bills or planning budgets. As a result, I want to bring real-life examples into my class to help my students not only understand the real-life applications but also have fun while learning math.

Next Coming Weeks

In the next coming weeks, I will continue to blog about my experience throughout my 8P29 math course. Please write a comment and share any real-life applications that you have used in a math lesson!


References 

A Learning Place A Teaching Place. (2014 May 4). Instrumental or Relational Understanding of Mathematics. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/TW_RQXWiCFU. 

Jo Boaler. youcubed at Stanford University. Retrieved from http://www.youcubed.org/wp-content/uploads/Positive-Classroom-Norms2.pdf

Welcome Fellow Teacher Candidates!

I am in my fifth year of Con-ed J/I with a teachable in history. A little bit about me is growing up I struggled with school. I especially struggled in mathematics. I wanted to be as far as possible away from school. If you asked me ten years ago what I would be doing when I grew up, never in a million years would I have thought of becoming a teacher.

Due to my experiences, I want to help build growth mindset in students. Likewise, I strive to create a space where all students are excited to learn and know that they belong!

This blog will follow my journey throughout the EDBE 8P29 course at Brock University. I still today struggle with math, although I understand the importance of having this skill. Throughout this course, I hope to gain knowledge that I can bring into my future classroom and in my practicum. I want  students to develop growth mindset, especially in mathematics.

I am excited to have another platform to share content that I have learned but also gain knowledge from other blogs.

Happy blogging!