Lesson 1

Gosh!Mathematics was never so interesting in my life. Today's lesson was fun and it gave me a different perspective on how I view Mathematics. Thanks Dr Yeap for planning such interesting hands-on experiences for us. Well, I guess that is already an answer as to how children learn mathematics ....hands-on experiences, concrete materials, purposeful play and at the end abstract thinking together with a supportive and appropriate environment.

Tonight, I am pretty fascinated with what a simple instruction can lead to so many findings, for example, activity 1, what is the 99th alphabets in your name in a certain counting sequence. We came up with so many ideas to get the correct answers and each of us has our own preferences in ways to find the answer. I think this has to do with our prior knowledge and experiences in doing Mathematics. I believe it will be the same for the children when they solved their problems, they will exercise their prior knowledge too. Besides, this activity allowed me to see beyond just solving the question. It actually make me realised that there are mathematical 'rules' in it, for example, patterning.

I too learned that there are many big ideas in mathematics. For example, just numbers alone can be viewed in four different ways;Nominal, ordinal, cardinal and measurement. And there are patternings, differentiated instructions and the cpa approaches.... and I'm sure by the end of this module, the list might just be as long as the river nile.