Mistakes & challenges = weight lifting for the brain!

My next pre-course task is to watch videos from this site: https://www.youcubed.org/ This is a website from Stanford University all about having a growth mindset towards maths.

There are loads of video! The feedback loop that the brain has is amazing! When we feed positivity into it, the brain learns and grows and ultimately does better! In relation to teaching, knowing this impacts on what I might expect out of students and how I (hopefully!!) help them feel about their own abilities. If they are praised and helped to believe

that they can do a task, even if it difficult, they will learn more.

The videos talk abou this idea of a 'maths person myth' - when children are labelled (by parents? By teachers? By themselves?) that they either are or aren't maths 'people' or people who find maths easier than other people. They go on to explain that it all comes down to neural pathways and if you practise something lots, you are forming and strengthening those pathways.

Like a weight-lifter needs to keep adding weight to build muscle, so we need to keep challenging our brains with harder and harder problems! This can obviously be applied to any subject.

One of the videos looked at ways of learning maths:

1. draw it

2. team work

3. experiment

4. find resources

5. start with a small/simpler case

This is great to think about teaching maths and encouraging children to draw the problem, to work in groups and to try stuff out using some manipulatives if appropriate. It really gives good rationale for this! I was really surprised to hear that using fingers is ok in maths! I've always used my fingers when I do maths! Apparently studies show that even when we don't physically use our fingers - we are imagining them!!!

Being visual in maths is key!