Reflection

Workshop One :

I view mathematics as one of the subject in school where it involves numbers and calculation. But, it is actually more than just a subject. It is something that revolves around us daily, without us knowing that. Almost everything requires mathematical solution to work. Young children need to immerse themselves in the process by doing their own activities with little help from the teachers. Yelland (1999) supports the principle of Froebel and Montessori that both of them seemed to agree that children learn most effectively from self-directed activities which give them a high level of empowerment and ownership and thus, high intrinsic motivation.

Learning mathematics is not only restricted to pen and paper. It can be extend to another way of learning which is by play or using realia to improve the understanding of mathematics with young children. According to Yelland (1999), early childhood educators have always contended that young children learn best through play. It is not all about numbers and symbols as household items could be used to further enhance the learning. Balls could be use as an object to count instead of the normal numbers on chalkboard.

My assumptions about early childhood mathematics are that the young children will only need to know the basic of mathematics which is to know about the numbers and the simplest of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. This will help them to slowly develop the skill to enable them to be involved in the learning and eventually help to increase their knowledge regarding mathematics.

Workshop Two :

I learn to count in mathematics during my primary years of schooling thanks to my lovely mathematics teacher. Solving problems in mathematics does not restrict to one way only but it can be done in several ways through computation. In computation you have either mental or written computation. I am more familiar with written computation because I was taught to do the written rather than mental computation which involves the tools that you normally have with you, that is pen and paper.

I was taught to use the written formal algorithm where I would have to solve the numbers aligned on the right first then moves on to the one on the left. If it was involving bigger numbers, I would first draw stick figures to indicate that is the number that I want to represents. It is easier this way because you could count the stick one by one instead of seeing the big numbers who young children find a bit difficult to digest. As the year goes by, a new method was introduced which is the number line. This is a good technique for young children and I myself loves this technique as it its fast and you could do addition subtraction, multiplication or even division with it!

Learning multiplication and division is quite similar to learning addition and subtraction. Teacher used models as to ease the students' understanding about the concept of multiplication and division. I think that it is good because the students could see the objects and were able to solve it rather than they have to imagine the numbers involved in their head. Also, I have to memorize the multiplication tables from 2 - 12 every single day during maths hour. This is to ensure that we are able to subitize the numbers to be multiplied to further deduce the steps in order to crack the answers.

In conclusion, during my primary years I was encouraged to use both written computation and mental computation by my teacher. To solve mathematical problems it does not depends on how you try to solve the problems but as long as you get the correct answer, you are on the right track. One of my maths teacher used to say that to encourage us in class.