Week 1 (5/1-9/1/09)

This week remarks the new beginning of my third year in completing my degree under the program known as PISMP of Mathematics. To begin with I would like to thanks to all my lecturers especially Madam Lam and my friends who had contributed a lot of supports and knowledge in order to help me in my study for the past 2 years. After a brief of introduction of our new subject, I begin to knowing this course. Our course is Teaching of Numbers, Fractions, Decimals and Percentages.

In this whole week, I learn about the definition and the function of the number sense is all about. From my reading, I realised that number sense is not a finite entity that a student either has or does not have. Its development is a lifelong process, and in early childhood and elementary school number sense development involves several stages; Pre number development; Early number development and Number development. Besides my reading from Helping children learn mathematics by Robert E. Reys, Madam Lam also suggested to me to read an article entitled ‘Two needed revolutions’ by A.J McIntosh from Challenging Children to Think When They Compute which I found really interesting and I am feel amazed with the uniqueness of number.

At the end of the week, we had some great time where we were divided into several group to play some game involving number sense. Suk Ling and me designed a game which identical with the game of ‘Snake and Ladder” but we did some modified so that it is suitable to primary students and focus in building their number senses. Overall, this week is so great and I am so enthusiastic to be continuing my study.