Day 1

Excitement in Day 1

Today is the first lesson for this module. A mixed feeling of excitement and worries, as Maths was never my favourite subject. We started of the lesson with an interesting activity of finding which letter would be in the 99^th place in the lecturer’s name. After so much of counting, we found that the third letter in his name is the 99^th place. It gets more excited when we are to find out which letter in our name is the 99^th place. After most of us completed, we realised the 99^th place will be the 3^rd letters in our name. We also realised that there is a pattern that of how we can solve this.

In today’s lesson, I learnt that there are four teaching steps to teach children.

·         Teaching by modelling

·         Teaching by scaffolding

·         Teaching by providing opportunity

·         Teaching by explaining

One point that I agree with Vygotsky is that children learn in a social environment. They learn best through social interaction. As such they should be given the opportunities to interact and discussed with their friends. I guess now it is alright if the classroom becomes noisier if the children are busy in their discussion.

At the end of the lesson, knowing about the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract ( CPA ) gives me a better understanding of how such approach are particularly effective with students who have mathematics difficulties. Through this approach, children are introduce to learning from using concrete objects, then to pictorial and finally to abstract. 
Thanks to Jerome Bruner for introducing such theory :)