Looking for a math tutor? The search is over! The tip from last week showed the beginnings of an educational digital channel from one of our own alumnus here at UBC. This week I want to feature another inspirational educator who happens to have an educational mathematics channel! Your future tutor, math teacher and YouTube star Eddie Woo. A public high school teacher for more than 10 years, Eddie Woo gained international attention when he posted videos of his classroom lessons online, to assist an ill student. His YouTube channel, WooTube has more than 695,000 subscribers and his videos have been viewed over 41.6 lifetimes of teaching!
He was named Australia’s Local Hero and was a Top 10 Finalist in the Global Teacher Prize for his love of teaching mathematics. Eddie believes that mathematics can be embraced and enjoyed by absolutely everybody! In the following TED Talk, he shares his passion for mathematics, declaring that “mathematics is a sense, just like sight and touch” and one we can all embrace. Using surprising examples of geometry, he encourages everyone to seek out the patterns around us, for a whole new way to learn math. Watch below his inspiring TED Talk: Mathematics is the sense you never knew you had.
I LOVE MATHEMATICS AS WELL!!! As a math teacher, during my lectures, I would tell stories, instead of explaining theorems and proofs only. Without stories, some important parts of student comprehension are left out and become unaddressed. We have to understand that math and culture are two ends of the same twine. Math is an important element of human culture, as such, it can’t be taught in complete alienation from other subjects. We must challenge the dominant perspective of how mathematics is learned and taught. The best way is to create engaging and meaningful math classrooms that contextualize mathematics. On TeacherVision you will find resources to help teach students how to contextualize math. The resources are appropriate for whichever grade level you teach on various mathematical themes, such as geometry, algebra, probability & statistics, money, measurement, and more!
Incorporating other subjects such as art, reading, and science into your math lessons will help hold your students’ interest in the subject and will make interdisciplinary connections in a way that math makes sense to them. Math is a human language, so we all have the ability to understand it. Putting words back into math lessons enables even the youngest school-age minds to grasp complex concepts, such as fractions, that are traditionally thought of as abstract and difficult to understand. Teaching math as a language is method taught by Randy Palisoc, a passionate educator, known for making math easy. He has created a stunningly simple and effective approach of teaching math, where it no longer creates problems for kids but solves them through language and stories. Watch how his approach to learning math works in the following TED Talk: Math isn’t hard, it’s a language