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Category Archives: motivating math students
It takes a lot of teacher effort to make math easy.
Over the years, I’ve found that it takes a lot of effort to make math easy for my students. End of semester exams are fast approaching, and I am doing my utmost to prepare my students. I’ve created some new review material for my grade nine math students that I hoped would help them better understand the unit on slope, intercepts, lines and the equations y = mx and y = mx + b. That’s pretty abstract stuff for some of my grade nine students, especially the ones who didn’t actually pass math in grade eight but because of social promotion are now in my grade nine math class.
It’s been a challenge all semester long to keep these kids engaged enough so they can learn. I feel as if I’ve been dancing as fast as I can. I have found using the LCD projector or even the overhead projector to teach the lesson and take up work useful. I don’t know exactly why kids pay more attention when my lesson is projected on a screen than written on the blackboard. Maybe the screen reminds them of of a video monitor? I don’t know why, but since it works I keep doing it. Has anyone else found this to be the case?
The last couple of days have been pretty hectic. I’ve been pushing my students to do their best, and to be honest, it’s exhausting. At the end of class today, I was beginning to think that maybe I was pushing myself too much, too. I had spent most of Saturday creating review material and most of Sunday refining the exam so that my students could demonstrate their learning to the best of their ability.
My husband, not a teacher, was watching all this and told me that I was handing my students their lessons on a silver platter. He felt I was doing too much. I told him that I wasn’t handing them their lessons on a silver platter. I was differentiating instruction. I thought that was funny. He didn’t. I guess it’s an inside joke.
Today at the end of class as I was gathering up my materials, just dying for a cup tea to sooth my throat, one of my students came over and told me something that had made all that work on the weekend and all those other weekends this semester worthwhile. He told me that he liked the way I taught because I made math easy. He had never found math easy before. If he didn’t get it, I would explain it in another way. I need to remember those words when I get discouraged or feel overwhelmed. Yes, making math easy takes a lot of work, but it is so rewarding. Now, for that cup of tea.