Personal Learning Path

Hey Everyone!  So, this week I planned on taking it back to the basics of multiplication for our future second-grade teachers.  According to standard 2.OA  of the NYS Common Core Learning Standards in Mathematics children will:  Work with equal groups of objects to gain foundations for multiplication. 3. Determine whether a group of objects (up to 20) has an odd or even number of members, e.g., by pairing objects or counting them by 2s; write an equation to express an even number as a sum of two equal addends. 4. Use addition to find the total number of objects arranged in rectangular arrays with up to 5 rows and up to 5 columns; write an equation to express the total as a sum of equal addends . To me, this seems vague to an extent. Teaching multiplication makes me look back to when I was learning it. My teachers provided us with worksheets and little tricks to remember specific times tables, for instance, the finger trick when working with th...

This week we are going to talk about ratios! YIPPEE.  I found a few different ways to teach this topic that are fun and engaging. To start, this weekend is the super bowl, and I'm not sure about you guys but my team made it all the way (Go Patriots!) so why not try to use this fun event to get students involved in learning ratios. A little refresher for all you teachers, ratios are comparing values, easy enough right? So if we have 4 squares and three are blue, and one is red we would have a ratio of 3:1, comparing the three blue to the one red within the whole. When it comes to sports math will always be involved, you need the numbers for scores, players, yardage and so on. Connecting content to interest could make learning for the students more comfortable, and they can make that external connection as well. An idea that could be used is picking a team or player in the NFL (or any sport) and look at their stats for the current sea...

Hey guys, This week I decided to start the blog off with fractions. I'm thinking of doing this topic for a couple of posts, to not only help myself refresh but to understand it better. When I was in school fractions was one of my biggest enemies (other than math itself!), So I felt that a refresher with fractions would be an easy way to get this math party started. Quick Question! If you are at a party and there are 12 friends there and its time to eat cake how many slices would they need to cut the cake into? How many slices would be left after you received your piece? After six friends got theirs?              So this was a simple question to get out fraction juices flowing, we would need 12 pieces of cake, there would be 11/12 left of the cake (who only takes one slice of cake?!) and jokes on the question because I would be eating six slices, not my friends... just kidding but that would be 6/12 or 1/2 after six friends got cake. Fractions a...

I'm Kelsie, and this is my Personal Learning Plan.  In this blog, I will look deeper into math teaching strategies, find topics and content that will help me become more comfortable teaching math, and strengthen my weak areas in various topics. The material I will be looking at ranges from first grade to sixth grade.  I hope you enjoy reading about my journey and progress.