Working Together

 [Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different ability levels, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible, not only for learning what is taught, but also for helping his or her teammates learn—thus creating an atmosphere of achievement.] Read more on TeacherVision 
 on the topic of cooperative learning! I believe working together in pairs or groups as students is very beneficial to their learning. Group work helps the student learn more about themselves and about others. They learn to work together, collaborate ideas, better their communication skills, and much more!

I am a firm believer in cooperative learning and believe it is essential for students to experience. I think that to be a successful teacher you must try to get your students to experience as much human interaction as possible. Our world would not exist without human interaction and it is important for students to see that and problem solve within their groups or pairs.

While doing some research on cooperative learning I ran across this segment, [In order to create an environment in which cooperative learning can take place, three things are necessary. First, students need to feel safe, but also challenged. Second, groups need to be small enough that everyone can contribute. Third, the task students work together on must be clearly defined.] Read more at Cooperative Learning Workshop   This is great information for making sure the enviroment for cooperative learning is in perfect condition! This is a great example of some cooperative learning happening within a classroom!

Methods of Multiplication for the Mind

I remember learning multiplication in 3rd and 4th grade and having to do those dreaded time tables! Then, after time tables. we had to move on to two digit number multiplication! I remember only learning one way to do multiplication tables and that was the old fashioned long way of multiplying. Like you just saw in the video, this is the method I believe most of us learned, but I'm going to talk about other ways to multiply double digit numbers!

Here is a problem solved in the standard way:

Now there are many ways to solve this and not use the standard method! 

First there is a method called the Lattice Method of Multiplication. After learning more about this method, I realized that this is a very easy method to catch on to and teach! Learn how to do it in this short video! The Lattice Method I wish that I would have been exposed to this method as an elementary student! I believe that this method is simple and easy to understand! It is also a method you could use to help you check your answers and make sure they are correct!

Another method I believe is pretty cool, but a little more complicated to me, is the Russian Peasant Method of Multiplication. This method I believe takes more work than it should. If you don't know what I am talking about here is a short video example -> Russian Method. I think this method takes more thinking than need and I also believe it is more time consuming!

Overall, there are more methods for multiplying, but here are a few you might not have known about! Teaching and learning multiple ways to do a single math problem is important because you might not know what works best for you!