Introduction
Discussing the article “An Experiment in Three Approaches to Teaching Average to Elementary School Children” by John D. Baker and Raymond W. Beisel, the famous and competent scholars, from the credible and reliable source – “School Science and Mathematics”, it is necessary for one to point out that the given work contributed to the process of the mathematics’ teaching of the elementary school children greatly. That is why it would be relevant for one to analyze the key points and the basic teaching methods represented in this article.
Main body
Generally saying, this work is based on the investigation of the various types of experiences that the common children should encounter to best understand, so-called mathematics average. The given study was carried out on the information received from the experiment group of the children of the fourth – sixth grade age groups.
According to this article, “Differences among pretest, posttest, and interview performances suggest some advantage in the use of a visual instructional style” (Baker, Beisel, 2001, p. 23). The experiment also detected that the collaborative deliberations as well resulted in positive results in the mathematics teaching of the given age group.
To achieve to fulfill the above-described task, it was proposed to the teachers to recommend the children compare the distributions of the related data sets. To understand the data sets those kids (of the 6 and 8 grades) were also recommended to use the measures of the center, including the mean. Concerning this, one may firmly assert that learning about average, children should be given different tasks connected to the data distributions.
In their work, John D. Baker and Raymond W. Beisel refer to other competent and credible scholars Russell and Mokros, who state that “teaching the algorithm should probably be delayed until the sixth grade to avoid interference with conceptual understanding. [They motivate by the following argument] …a fourth – grade or fifth – grade teacher considering a textbook lesson that focuses on the algorithm may wonder how to provide a richer conceptual understanding” (Russell and Mokros, cited from Baker and Beisel, 2001, p. 24). One can firmly agree with the provided statement, but may also suggest that the types of experiences that the students should primarily learn need great attention. And here, the instructional style concerning the learning and the performance, represented in the given article, would be really useful.
It verses mentioning that the computer spreadsheets greatly support a teaching style based on visual instruction, as it is convenient and quite simple in usage tool for comparing and analyzing various representations of just the same data through third-fifth grades. They also assist in the data sets’ correspondence’s understanding and the undertaking of the graphical representations by the six-eight grade children. Concerning this information, one may suggest that such an approach eases the computational process between the teacher and his or her students, helps to create quickly accurate graphs (as the children’s drawings are likely to be inaccurate); it is also helpful in finding the correct solutions and recognizing.
Conclusion
Therefore, one may conclude that the issues of the performance on the common problems (like average) are worth attention, and have been affected by different teaching methods, as it can be firmly asserted that the teaching style and techniques influence children’s understanding of the mathematical problems greatly.
Works Cited
Baker, John D., and Raymond W. Beisel. “An Experiment in Three Approaches to Teaching Average to Elementary School Children.” School Science and Mathematics 101.1 (2001): 23-26.