Experiences

Inovative and creative way of work

Inese Jakubova

Latvia

Vocational School

Maths, ICT

Teaching in class

Direct

I teach mathematics from Form 5 till Form 12. Already in Form 5 when I start teaching fractions the students think of fractions as something abstract . In order to make sense of operations with fractions I compare them to counting money because the wholes are euros and the cents are the fractions. On the other hand , in the high school when students start learning stereometry they cannot connect the lesson material with the real situation how the spatial or described figure will look in the real life. We are trying to solve the problem making real models. Text tasks are most problematic for any form. I teach to read the task from the beginning to the end, but in smaller forms students make a drawing and then describe the most important things. Older students fill in the table. Everything goes well while the teacher is leading the task solving , but without the help of the teacher problems begin. If the task is very similar , it is soluble , but changing the content or formulating the question differently makes the task insoluble. We have divided the forms into levels so the students who are bad at maths can learn at a slower space and acquire the basics which is useful in other subjects too. At the same time high- level students have time to solve the tasks of higher degree of difficulty.
It is the low-level students who lack motivation or wish to study independently at least a little bit. Sometimes an interesting visual information to demonstrate the students the content of the lesson is missing. It takes a lot of time to prepare attention- catching and interesting material for explaining the current issue. I have involved the students from higher classes to form materials which explain a notion or a theorem on a basis of a real example. It takes time and wish to immerse themselves into a problem , but those students who managed it did the task very well.
In high school forms there is no time to acquire the study content thoroughly during the lessons therefore they should finish the class tasks at home or do independent homework. It disturbs me that many students do not wish to devote their time to assigned tasks , and some home tasks remain undone.