This week in maths we were learning about teaching measure. I've always found maths challenging and always lacked confidence in simple tasks. Amanda talked us through the concept of conservation, a Piagetian theory which deals with children's lack of ability to realise that measure is not affected by experience. I've never heard of this concept before and was interesting to learn how it affects children's learning and the ways to overcome it. We also carried out a number of practical activities, including creating meter cubes of our own, helping us to visualise area and volume. These would also be useful classroom activities to help children see and experience more complex measure.
I have always found converting litres, milliteres etc difficult but this tutorial helped me to realise its not as difficult when you break it down and I managed to complete a complex problem on my own, due to being able to visualise and work out large quanities of centimeters/meters.
Overall, it was a useful tutorial in helping build my confidence in my own maths abilities, as well as my abilities to teach it to children.
It is often the case that you really only understand something when you have to teach it to someone else.
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