The content of these first two sessions was very familiar to me. Having been involved in teacher education as well as my role a class teacher for many years, negative views about maths have been shared on every course, session I've ever led!, including parents' sessions. The negative experiences that many people share about maths very often revolve around some key ideas:
- It's not relevant to my daily life
- It's difficult
- It's abstract
- I don't have a 'maths brain'
As an educator, one of my main aims is to open the door to a new understanding of the importance of maths and to help learners realize that everybody can achieve high levels of understanding. Relevance is hugely important and mathematics is simply a language that helps us understand and explain the natural and made world. One of the main advantages of our inquiry-based programme is the opportunity it gives us as teachers to bring maths to life and reveal what an amazing way of thinking it is. It's everywhere we care to look! Here's an image from my Sunday afternoon stroll
that got me thinking about angles and geometry!: What angle is this skateboard ramp? Is it optimal for its purpose? Who designed it? The skateboarders themselves?
How has knowledge of geometry informed the design of this skateboard park?
What fraction of a circle's circumference is this arc segment? What decisions were made when designing it? Very often, traditional approaches to teaching geometry focus on examples in textbooks that can be divorced from reality, in particular, a reality that young learners can connect with and are interested in. These examples above could provide the stimulus for learning in geometry from Grade 3 to Grade 8 ....examples such as these are everywhere and by collecting them we can bring mathematics alive by making it relevant to our immediate environment.
