Holiday Fun

Songs and poems are a lot of fun for the holidays or any day. I found some that the kids really enjoy at Can Teach. You can use these to inspire the kids to draw an illustration that goes with the poem. They can even write their own poems, or write a letter to someone telling them about the poem they just read. These are just a few ideas. Use your imagination and you can come up with plenty of uses for these poems in the classroom. You can get some poems from Can Teach at this link: http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/songspoems.html

Procedural and Conceptual Knowledge

Many educators have been debating about how mathematics should be taught. The process of teaching for procedural knowledge involves memorizing formulas and mathematical symbols. Students are drilled with mathematical problems to practice and reinforce the procedure that was taught. Teaching for conceptual knowledge encourages students to make connections to prior knowledge and apply that knowledge to a new situation. Students are often provided with a mathematical problem that they with solve on their own without a given mathematical formula. Although many argue one side or the other, most agree that there should be a balance of both conceptual and procedural knowledge taught to students. Some, however, are unsure which to teach first: the procedure or the concept.
Many teachers are turning to conceptual teaching because students easily forget procedures if they do not understand the concepts.Teaching conceptually prior to teaching procedurally makes sense. Algorithms were created by mathematicians who understood the concepts. They transferred their understanding into a formula that makes mathematical sense. One cannot understand a symbol, until they first understand its meaning. This is comparable to learning literacy. Teaching reading and writing is built on a knowledge base of the alphabet. A person cannot read printed words unless they understand the letters that make up those words. They also need to understand the meaning of those words. Thus is the same for interpreting mathematical formulas and symbols. Students need to build a foundation of knowledge before going on to standard formulas. After all, you would not give a toddler a novel and expect them to become avid readers.
They key is to help students understand why the mathematical procedure works, not that they need blocks to solve every problem. Using blocks is a tool to help students make connections that will help them understand the reasoning behind the mathematical procedure. These procedures only become rote, and meaningless to those who do not understand the meaning behind them. Using algorithms is not a skill if you don’t know how to use it. Therefore we need to teach the conceptual knowledge first so that we can apply it to the procedural method.