Subject Specific Teaching Methods (Elementary Mathematics)

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Subject Specific Teaching Methods (Elementary Mathematics)

Introduction

Predictable cycles are formed by the world in the form of breakup of numbers and patterns, and as soon as these patterns are grasped by the students, they will feel comfortable with the world of Mathematics (University at Buffalo, 2012). These words from the periodical highlights one of the way in which the students are made comfortable with the world of learning mathematics. This essay is written with an objective to demonstrate the way in which I would teach rounding with decimals to the nearest tenth, by following a number of tasks.

Discussion

The students at the school level should have a capability to understand the ordering and rounding of decimals (Reys, Linquist, Lambdin, & Smith, 2007). The students studying in the fifth grade must be provided with the acquaintance about how to perform the activity of rounding with mixed decimals. Therefore, this lesson is designed to teach these students with the tactic of rounding decimals to nearest tenth.

Before learning this concept, the students must have prerequisite understanding of how to round whole numbers and place values. They should have an understanding of basic concept of fractions and the place value for decimals and whole numbers.

In this lesson, the students will be presented with the concepts and skills that will make them capable of rounding decimals to the nearest tenth. The learners will also be assisted in checking and avoiding the common problems they might face during the learning process.

When rounding decimals to the nearest tenth position, there is a possibility that students might encounter conceptual and procedural errors. Some of these problems include that instead of rounding the decimal portion of the problem, they round the whole numbers. A second possible misconception is that students may not be able to round up and in necessary case they just copy down the value of tenth place that is provided to them in the problem. In order to check the understanding of students related to rounding of decimals to nearest tenth and to identify the areas of conceptual or procedural errors, some examples and tasks that could help include providing the students with a problem in which there are two figures “0.843” and “2.781”, requiring students to change the decimal places to the nearest tenth. The participants who correctly ...