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Math

The document emphasizes the critical importance of teaching mathematics in early childhood, highlighting its role in daily life skills, academic success, and critical thinking development. It outlines a learning trajectory approach that includes setting mathematical goals, understanding developmental paths, and designing instructional tasks tailored to children's learning levels. Additionally, it discusses the teacher's role in fostering an engaging learning environment and the necessity of mathematics for personal, social, and cultural relevance.

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Cielo Casido
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19 views8 pages

Math

The document emphasizes the critical importance of teaching mathematics in early childhood, highlighting its role in daily life skills, academic success, and critical thinking development. It outlines a learning trajectory approach that includes setting mathematical goals, understanding developmental paths, and designing instructional tasks tailored to children's learning levels. Additionally, it discusses the teacher's role in fostering an engaging learning environment and the necessity of mathematics for personal, social, and cultural relevance.

Uploaded by

Cielo Casido
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lesson 1: Mathematics in the Early Years

 Importance of Teaching Mathematics in the


Early Years
o Kids need Math to be able to count.
Counting is something they will need every
single day of their lives. From the little
things to the big things in life, counting is in
every aspect of our lives.
o Math will help your child get their
numerals right. One of the most important
things a child will be working on figuring
out for a huge chunk of their adult life is
money. Not to mention shopping and
dealing with change which requires basic
Math skills such as adding, subtraction,
multiplication, and division.
o Many essential life skills fall under Math.
Skills like being able to read a clock to tell
the time, calculating time in terms of hours,
days, weeks or months, reading
temperature and so much more. A lot of
flights could be missed if one is unable to
calculate military time.
o Math is the basis for a whole array of
other subjects, ranging from Accounting
to Statistics to Economics and even
certain Sciences such as Physics and
Chemistry. Without knowing Math, a
child’s options of higher studies narrow
down.
o Math helps develop critical thinking
skills, a skill which is a huge
requirement once kids enter the real
world. With the ongoing competition in the
job market, developing and excelling in
Math is becoming more and more of a
requirement to get ahead.
 Learning Trajectory Path (Approach)
1. Learning substantial math is critical for
primary grade children. The early years
are especially important for math
development. Children’s knowledge of math
in these years predicts their math
achievement for later years—and
throughout their school career.
Furthermore, what they know in math
predicts their later reading achievement as
well. Given that early math learning predicts
later math and reading achievement, math
appears to be a core component of learning
and thinking.
2. All children have the potential to learn
challenging and interesting math.
Primary grade children have an often-
surprising ability to do abstract math—that
is, math that is done by reasoning mentally,
without the need for concrete objects.
Listen to the worries of this first-grader.
3. Primary grade children often know, and
can definitely learn, far more challenging
and interesting math than they are taught in
most U.S. classrooms. That does not
necessarily mean math pushed down from
higher grades. It means letting children
invent their own strategies for solving a
variety of types of problems. How can
teachers best support creative thinking in
mathematics?
4. Understanding children’s mathematical
development helps teachers be
knowledgeable and effective in teaching
math. Children’s thinking follows natural
developmental paths in learning math.
When teachers understand these paths and
offer activities based on children’s progress
along them, they build math learning
environments that are developmentally
appropriate and particularly effective. A
useful tool in understanding and supporting
the development of children’s mathematical
reasoning is a math learning trajectory.
There are learning trajectories for
mathematics at all age levels, from birth
throughout the school years, and for
learning all kinds of content—from specific
math concepts such as number and
operations to specific science concepts like
understanding electricity.

o Learning Trajectories
o Math learning trajectories have three
parts: a mathematical goal, a
developmental path along which
children’s math knowledge grows to
reach that goal, and a set of
instructional tasks, or activities, for each
level of children’s understanding along
that path to help them become
proficient in that level before moving on
to the next level. Let’s examine each of
these three parts.
o Goal. The first part of a learning
trajectory is the goal. Goals should
include the big ideas of math, such as
“numbers can be used to tell us how
many, describe order, and measure” and
“geometry can be used to understand
and to represent the objects, directions,
and locations in our world, and the
relationship between them of knowing
how to solve a variety of addition and
subtraction problems.
o Developmental path. The second part
of a learning trajectory consists of levels
of thinking, each more sophisticated
than the last, leading to achieving the
mathematical goal. That is, the
developmental path describes a typical
learning route child follow in
developing understanding of and skill
in a particular mathematics topic.
o Learning trajectories are important
because young children’s ideas and
their interpretations of situations are
different from those of adults. Teachers
must interpret what the child is doing
and thinking and attempt to see the
situation from the child’s viewpoint.
Knowledge of developmental paths
enhances teachers’ understanding of
children’s thinking, helping teachers
assess children’s level of understanding
and offer instructional activities at that
level. Similarly, effective teachers
consider the instructional tasks from
the child’s perspective.
o Instructional tasks. The third part of a
learning trajectory consists of sets of
instructional tasks or activities matched
to each level of thinking in a
developmental progression. The tasks
are designed to help children learn the
ideas and practice the skills needed to
master that level. Teachers use
instructional tasks to promote
children’s growth from one level to the
next.

 Role of a Teacher in Teaching Mathematics


in the Primary Grades

o The role of a teacher is to create an


engaging encouraging environment for
young learners to thrive in.
- Math Classroom
- Peer teaching in math
- Conducive to learning environment
- Be creative in giving some activities
- Have a resourceful and creative
Learning Materials
- Give appropriate activity according to
their level of learning and
understanding (not so difficult and so
easy)
- Have groupings in some activities

Who are the primary grades?


o
In the Philippines refers to kindergarten
until Grade 3. Generally, primary grades
completers are expected to have a good
sense of number, perform simple
operations like addition and subtraction,
have the capacity progress from using
physical examples and written calculations
to carrying out operations mentally, and
have the ability to identify proper strategies
and techniques needed to come to
conclusions and carrying out calculations
when solving mathematical problems.
 Why do we teach Mathematics?
o Three Major Reasons
1. Necessary Mathematics - mathematics
for school, employment and economy.
2. Social and Personal Mathematics -
mathematics for personal and social
relevance.
3. Appreciation of Mathematics as an
Element of Culture - the importance
not only of appreciating mathematics
itself, but also its role in history, culture
and society in general.
o Necessary Mathematics in School
- Science
- Music
- Social Studies
- Home Economics
- Language – on how many syllables,
words, phrase, sentence etc.

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