Lesson 3 – Problem Solving & Environment-based tasks

According to Van de Walle, J. (2009), it’s important to understand that Mathematics is to be taught through problem-solving. The learning outcome is the problem-solving process. Chapter 3 & 4 introduces that we should take into consideration children’s prior knowledge and build on it through engaging them in tasks that are problem-based.
As we plan the pictograph lesson using the environment, we keep Bruner’s CPA approach in mind. The following are some of our reflections:

• Concrete experience
The sculpture provides the concrete experiences where the children have the prior knowledge of shapes and count to identify and count the number of shapes. As we counted the spears we were lost as to where we started counting from. This will pose a challenge for the children; they will need to come up with a strategy as to how they would not count the spears twice, which is to know where their starting point is. Another challenge was to count or not to count the inner spears.

• Pictorial representation
They are to transfer their concrete experience into pictorial representation as they use the circle to represent the spears on the pictograph and etc.

• Abstract
They will need to put numbers to the pictorial representation that is to record in numbers and do a comparison.

Expending from the above activity, I was able to connect with Bruner’s principles on:

• Readiness
Instruction must be related to the experiences and contexts that make the students willing and able to learn.

• Spiral organization
Instruction must be structured so that it can be easily grasped by the student.

• Going beyond the information given
Instruction should be designed to facilitate extrapolation and or fill in the gaps.

I found the follow link a reinforcement to our lesson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCS7GO0fkc4