ICT Integration for mathematics in Class III

Teaching and learning of Division as Repeated Subtraction through ICT integration for mathematics in grade III. 
23/9/2019

A new Approach to Primary Education shifted focus from “Teacher centered to Child centered learning”. The mathematics curriculum is designed to help students appreciate the value of mathematics and make connection to real-world experiences. There is now a greater emphasis on the need for the students to understand the mathematics they learn rather than to memorize rote procedure. When discussing mathematical ideas, we expect students to use the processes of problem solving, communication, reasoning, making connection and representation. There is an increased emphasis on problem solving in mathematics but Bhutanese students are academically challenged to solve various mathematical problems. These fallouts are attributable to many factors such as inappropriateness of curriculum standard to their cognitive abilities like logical reasoning, deterred linguistic development and ability especially in English, lack of reading habits and inadequate vocabularies and other subject teachers not applying Language across the curriculum. Hence, integrating of ICT in mathematics would certainly address some of the issues in finding difficulty with mathematics.

Basically, ICT integration into teaching and learning is found to be dependable on creativity and motivation of an individual teacher whereby a teacher has to maximize the impact of ICT by providing access to ICT resources for all the children and boost their learning and incorporating the use of ICT equipments in teaching. To my experience, ICT tools motivates and makes children interested in learning mathematics and improved their performance and achievement in the class.

The fourth lesson that I have integrated ICT was on “Division as Repeated Subtraction” for grade III in which two video clips were shown. During the lesson, children participated actively in watching the video clips on and carrying out the activities effectively. In essence, the video clips emphasized the connections among mathematical concepts and to connect abstractions to real-world setting. As a follow up activity, children were made to solve questions (provided worksheets) associated to the clips. Almost all the children were able to solve the questions correctly but to those few children who lacked the listening and comprehension skills were guided after going around the class. 

 

I have learnt that ICT integration helps to build on their prior knowledge and skills and it’s one of the fun ways of learning mathematics as they loved watching movies at home and they even requested me to show other clips related to mathematics. However, due to time constraints, I couldn’t show the related video clip but I have agreed to show other video clips in the next lesson for their better understanding. The lesson went effectively as the objectives of the lesson were fulfilled as children could get the clear concept of the lesson through ICT integration.

Thus, integrating ICT in teaching and learning helps to achieve the objectives of the lesson effectively, obtain active participation from the student and assist in teaching difficult concepts.  

ICT Integration for mathematics

Class: III

Topic: Division as Equal Grouping

Date: - 10/9/2019

My teaching experience has been incredible and I think I learned as much from the class as the students did. Teaching is not everybody’s cup of tea. It is a demanding profession, in which we need lots of content knowledge, planning, ideas, skills and patience. I have learned that teaching is not just reading of text, notes and guiding children through them but it requires lots of planning, reflection, reinforcement, seeking feedback, skills, delivering of content and being mindful.

Teaching has been a very difficult task for me as I encounter difficulty with learners and the frequent change in curriculum. Every learner that we come across doesn’t always have the same abilities to capture what has been taught. There are times when students can seem uninterested in learning and disruptive to the classroom environment. Hence, ICT integration for teaching mathematics has been found so meaningful and interesting for the learners. For instance, before I began with the lesson, I provided children with questions such as “What is division? Write down 2 examples of division as an equal grouping, etc.” Then I took my children in IT lab and let them browse internet and watch youtube on “Division as equal grouping” and ask them to look for the answer. 

 

However, nothing seem easy if children are not able to handle the computer and it was bit challenging in the beginning but with the two IT assistants, I could manage to let children experience browsing of net and to look for the answers. Children were so excited and couldn’t even wait for the teacher’s instruction. But gradually I could make them follow the instruction by projecting on how to go about searching for the information step by step.

As a follow up activity, I made them to share their experiences while using the computer and asked them to share what that have seen in the video clip with few examples of “Division as an equal grouping”.

Hence, to make the lesson much more effective, I took note of giving them basic ideas and information about handling computers before letting them to handle the computers.