How does the information presented in chapter four or in chapter eight connect to what you have seen in your practicum placement or how does it compare to what you have experienced in the past?
In my practicum placement, I am seeing numerous things that are mentioned in chapters 4 and 8. My teacher has been using the "think addition" strategy to teach subtraction to the class, demonstrating that you can add on from the smaller number instead of counting backwards to subtract and find the answer. She teaches them how addition and subtraction are related by helping them understand and acknowledge that 13 minus 7 is the same as "7 and what makes 13." This concept builds upon the commutative property for addition, in which the children understand that the order of an addition problem does not matter because it still has the same answer (5+3 is the same as 3+5). She allows the students to have individual time to work on and practice solving problems, sometimes allowing them to choose which method they want to solve them with. If they are learning a new strategy, then they must use that specific strategy to practice and learn it, but sometimes they are given options for adding and subtracting on worksheets or during their math game, for instance. For measurement, she has used non-standard units to have the children measure length, width, and weight of objects, such as blocks and plastic bears, demonstrating that "to measure" means that the attribute being measured is "filled" or "covered" or "matched" with a unit of measure with the same attribute. She uses multiple unit models rather than a single copy of a unit in an iteration process in order to properly show students how many blocks some object is in length, or how many bears the pumpkin weighs, which a balance scale is used for. In teaching time, the students are starting to learn that minutes are smaller than hours and that it takes 60 minutes to make one hour. Also, they are learning the purpose of the "big and little hands" in context of which to use when counting the minutes.
