ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE OF TEACHING UNITS AND TENS

             A week ago, my teacher told us that we have to prepare a ‘’class’’ in which we had to explain the units and tens by the universal design of learning principles. My group decided to explain first some theory and then do some other activities and games. We first split them in groups named as important places or monuments, there were a monument of each continent so everybody could feel part of the class, because the class was supposed formatted by 5 different cultures, we thought that it was important to show them some characteristics about the monuments, although it was a math class you can teach them geography and a little history. We also gave some roles of people who don’t understand English to make the simulation easier. We explained the theory with a power point to give some visual learning, the power point had some balls and with each ball we put a poster which said with numbers and letter how much units or tens there were.

Then we thought that we need an exercise to be sure that the students understood the information, we try to motivate them not by competence but with a simulation, we told them that their monuments were falling down so they had to make piles of bricks to endure the monuments, we gave them how much tens and units they had to get with those bricks in order to save the monuments but we also tell them that everybody should have at least a brick and that they had to help each other. Once they did it, we started another game in which they had to be walking around the class and the teacher told them to make groups of certain units and tens.

                But our practice had some mistakes as in the power point we should have written in every ball 1 to get them to understand that each ball was a unit and also focus a little more in the tens.  They second game was also a little difficult and the kids may not have understood it, also we lost the control of the class sometimes and we could have ask their attention by explaining to them the exercise that when the teacher raise his/her hand each of them have to raise their hand and be quiet. I think our best activity was the last game because they could have fun and also learn. Also when we explained the monument, we could have show them it on google earth so they can see them and place them ok.

What they do right, some groups give the students the opportunity to choose which game they wanted to play, one of these groups also includes a lot of types of learning lie using the tablet, by kinesthetic, writing and reading… That’s why I think that we should have included the children in the activity but letting them to choose which game they wanted to play and make different games in each group so they do different things at the same time so nobody gets bored.

              Finally we saw a video in which the teacher did it in a real class with blocks, the interactive board, groups of level in which the kids with more difficulties had a special attention, she showed them by an example with one of the groups what they had to do, so everybody was able to understand what to do by whatching the first group. Even with 11 different nationalities, she was able to teach them all. What caught more my attention was when the class was about to finish she asked them what they had learnt and that's how she evaluates them.