Brylee Beiswanger

11/17/14
Personal Reflection
From my experience working with third graders, I think the math center,
Memory, would benefit them in many ways. In my math practicum classroom, there
is a huge focus on multiplication, division, and how they are related. I have noticed
that most students get multiplication, but have a hard time with division. So my
math center would provide students an opportunity to practice division and
hopefully increase their memory and comfort level with division facts.
Math centers like Memory can be highly effective for elementary school
students. At this age, they have a lot of energy and math centers gives them the
opportunity to use their energy to engage in different math activities/games. Also,
math centers appeal to a variety of learners, such as visual, auditory, and kinesthetic
learners. In Memory, the visual learners have the opportunity to match and write
different division sentences. The auditory learners can say the division problems
out loud. The tactile/kinesthetic learners have the opportunity to work with
concrete objects by flipping over the game pieces and grouping them.
To incorporate real-world application, math centers can include practicing
real-world math problems. Maybe one center provides the students with real world
problems in which they have to use multiplication and money. For example, Sallys
babysitter gets paid $9 an hour. Last night she babysat for 3 hours. How much
money did Sallys babysitter get paid last night? The students would take 9 times 3
and figure out that the product is 27. Then the students could use fake money to
count out $27. Other centers could focus on other real-world problems. So the math
centers give the students the opportunity to practice concepts in different ways.

Brylee Beiswanger
11/17/14
In my future classroom, I hope to incorporate math centers into our weekly
schedule. I think math centers are highly engaging for the students because they are
learning and practicing math in an active way. Often students enjoy practicing math
this way because they are playing games and moving around the room, instead of
sitting in their desks for a long period of time. When I am a teaching, I hope to
incorporate math centers into my lessons at least two times a week for thirty
minutes. I will use the math centers so students can explore new concepts and
practice/reinforce learned concepts.