New Insights

Learning about the CGI method for teaching younger students about addition/subtraction and multiplication/division has really helped me to see how we can teach math better starting with the earlier grades and moving up. What CGI has taught me, is that students know math and it is up to us as teachers to work with them on using their knowledge. When giving them a problem for them to work on, we don't say we are doing multiplication today, as that is going to scare some kids. Giving them a story problem that they can draw out or use manipulatives on isn't as scary. After taking about it in class, I got to see that CGI problems are used at St. Agnes here in Vermillion in the kindergarten classroom. They have a math journal that every week each student works on their problem. It isn't "we're learning this today" but a chance for them to work out something on their own without being scared of labeling the problem. And that may be part of the math problem now. With traditional math, we start each lesson by what we are doing for the day, which can scare students before even getting to the problems. It is already too hard for them, and they haven't even tried. We should move away from that, and that is what the reform method is teaching us.