Thursday, June 16, 2011

Week Two 1510

This week in Mathematics for Elementary Education Teachers, I am learning about "Sets and Whole-Number Operations and Properties."  That is a mouthful and the information that follows is just as jam-packed with great information.  Last week, I felt that most the information presented was more of a refresher for me.  However, this week there has been far too may "what?" moments rather than "aha" moments.  What I found the most challenging was the information presented on Numeration with the included information on the "base-ten place-value numeration system."

This YouTube video does a good job giving a basic background for the reasoning behind base-ten.  As a substitute teacher, I am familiar with the schools using blocks and charts to help students comprehend the value of a unit.  Being able to see a relationship between units will help students understand and visually see that math is a part of everyday life and not secluded to the classroom.
The lesson in our text continues further into different bases and learning how to get from, for example, base six to base eight.  As I am still grasping the idea behind the different bases, I was able to watch this video that helped me learn how to go between the bases.

I have to admit that I have mastered the mathematical equations involved but I have failed to fully grasp the concept of base-ten numeration.  This course will move quickly and I am hoping that I will be able to fully understand concepts as they are introduced.  This is one that I am going to need to look over to be able to know the reason behind this type of teaching.

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