My Weekly Report & Reflection 4-5

Thanks for visiting my mathematics for educator’s blog again!

Through weeks 4 and 5 in mathematics class, I learned many valuable lessons that I can use in my future carer as a J/I teacher. Thus, this week I will be explaining resources that I have just used to explore integers within the number sense and numeration strand in the mathematics curriculum. My group explored a couple things that I would most definitely implement within my classroom. 

Firstly, a partner and myself played a mathematics game using integers (multiplication, division, subtraction as well as addition). This game was very engaging, and I think students from grades 5 to 7would benefit from playing this game, as while playing you don't necessarily think you are doing a math activity. Personally I am an individual who struggles and have always struggled with math, its something that just doesn’t come naturally to me. Yet, while playing this game, my partner and myself had a lot of fun, and it did not feel like an integer lesson would, it was a lot more engaging, and a much easier way to see the lesson first hand in a game like manipulative. Although I found this game engaging and I would use it in a classroom setting, an improvement that it could have it to have the option for more players, as it limits the players to two, which means as a teacher I would either need numerous of them, or this game could be improved by adding multiple players so all children in my class could play together and compete to win. The game board I am speaking of for this first manipulative is photographed below.

(Malatesta, 2018)

Following, we played a game called the Cubetto Playset, this game entitled coding, as we had to determine how to move Cubetto around the game board, as viewed below. 

(Malatesta, 2018)

This game was very fun and definitively was extremely engaging the entire class testing it out was very engaged and persistent to figure out how to correctly code Cubetto to move around the game board. Due to the aspect of coding, I believe this would be great for students as that seems to be a topic that many students thrive on and are interested in. therefore in using Cubetto, my table explored ways in which we could implement Cubetto in a mathematics lesson on integers. We determined the best way possible was to teach the class lessons on integers, and reward them by having an engaging hands on coding activity where the game board acts as a Cartesian Plane, containing both positive and negative values. With recently having been taught this in their math lesson, the student’s activity with Cubetto will require them to navigate Cubetto using coding to designated coordinates along the grid. 

This is solely one method that Cubetto can be used for that we believe would work for the junior intermediate level, let me know if you can think of any other creative ways, I would love to hear them!