How to inject creativity into your maths lessons | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional - 6 views
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Ah, Aha and Haha
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laurenkmetz on 17 Jun 14Summary of creativity- These three words!
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After reading chapter 7, I wanted to see how exactly to include creativity in a math class. This article shows that the beginning of having creativity in a classroom is for students to know that making mistakes and being wrong is ok! This article gives details on how to begin to set creativity as a learn target in math.
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"It seems to me that very few children are being taught to love maths or to get excited about it. There's a widespread perception that maths is simply a set of methods that must be learned in order to be able to cope with life after school." I see this a lot in my resource room, my students hate math because most of their material is taught as a process or procedure to get a solution instead of relating it to situations they will be faced with. I think this is where the creativity piece must come in; generating the "ah, aha and haha", and even the "oh", words in the classroom through challenging activities means students are truly starting to understand the mathematics. Students don't want to take risks because they are afraid of getting the answer wrong, but this is the part of learning in math that many students need the most -- they learn best from their mistakes.
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My favorite line in this article is, "If maths is to be a creative subject then we have to regard it as a subject where it is OK to get things WRONG." Many times I have heard students say that in math you are either wrong or right and there is no in between. Some students say this is why they like math others say this is why they hate it. Those that like this process are usually good at math or following formulas and directions. What I think both of these groups of students need to realize is math is what is happening between the wrong and the right answer. The teacher should provide them with opportunities to discover math processes using their creativity and building upon their mistakes.