Week 2

We are into the swing of things... This week we began our week of inspirational math. The week of inspirational math is focused on fostering a growth mindset for students specifically in the area of math. We began with asking questions about our mindset and our thoughts around math. The big idea is to have a growth mindset beyond math but we are going to focus on teaching this mindset through math.

We began by watching two videos around the idea of the brain and its elasticity. The big idea being that everyone can learn math. It was then followed by an activity called the "Four 4. This activity involved students trying to find every number from 1-20 using only four 4's, all four of them have to be used each time and any operation. This was really exciting for students, they were up out of their seats with excitement. We tweeted out about our lesson and we had tweets from math monkey and one of our math consultants from the board who has some inquiring questions for to ponder on.

On day two we moved to look at visual representations of numbers. Students had a lot of fun looking for patterns and making some connections of numbers visually and symbolically. Students then began to use colours to highlight patterns they began to see. It was very neat to see the pattern the large circles made. Students began to wonder what is the connection between these numbers.The activity continues with students drawing their own visual representations of numbers 1-20. Can't wait to see them!

Students also participated in a math mindset survey this week. The survey created by Ms Marilyn Kasian, requires students to critically think about their feelings and thoughts about how math is taught and learned. In a few months, we will re-take the survey to see if our thoughts and beliefs around learning math have changed. I look forward to seeing the results!

Follow our journey as we continue the week of inspirational math...

A. Porcari