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-eaIuCM530Small, M. (2017). Making math meaningful to Canadian students, K-8. Nelson Education.
