Today, I had the chance to view some of the teachers resources for K-6 Mathematics in Newfoundland. Being a very visual person and personally enjoying working in the primary grades, I was pleased to see the variety of books offered through large lap books and small reading books used in most of the primary grades. I think it was grade 3 however where there was an absence of these books. I feel that some sort of visual, helping to guide children would be a great resource. Even at my age now, I would still benefit from visuals, especially when introduced to something new! Ever try to put together some piece of furniture without the instructions? Now imagine that was a product from Ikea! Not happening... not for me anyways.
There will be kids that won't need or want visuals, but there most certainly will be the visual learners. We can as teachers, incorporate visuals and use manipulatives in the classroom, but I really like the idea of incorporating reading into mathematics. The simpleness of the Kindergarten book that depicted 10's by pictures of bears in train carts can be recreated and then manipulated by the students, sort of like a set of instructions for that piece of furniture. Then there was a pattern book showing pictures of those flat, colored, wooden shapes put into patterns in which the child has to guess the next shape needed to continue the pattern. Given the manipulatives of these wooden shapes to follow along with the book, children can be hands-on and do it themselves to show you what they know. They can then even extend the pattern to show any knowledge they have that extends beyond the question in the book.
Incorporating this idea into older classrooms, making things simple so that students can extend on visual problems with the use of manipulatives and/or working out problems on paper from visuals in a book could really help with their mathematics skills and make learning less cumbersome and boring. For instance, in a higher grade, the resources had a mass amount of writing, but the things that would catch my eye were the problems that were presented in pictures, such as a triangular set of frames that the child had to figure out the amount of ways that this set up could be rearranged. This visual I think, was still in the primary grades, in grade probably.
I understand that problems get more abstract as the grades progress but some sort of visual representation as a springboard into the deeper level of a concept, I feel, would be super helpful in many ways!
