Saturday, February 5, 2011

Better Spatial Sense as basis to strong Geometric Reasoning Power!

Young children at preschool age who are introduced to explore and experience Spatial Sense Concept is said to have a better reasoning in Geometric Thinking. Spatial Sense is defined as an intuition about shapes and the relationships among shapes. Spatial Sense includes the ability to mentally visualize objects and spatial relationships - to toggle things and objects around one's mind. It includes a comfort with Geometric descriptions of objects and position.
I began to realise the truth in the statement from the textbook, 
Elementary & Middle School Mathematics - Teaching Developmentally, which states that ;
" People with well developed spatial sense appreciate geometric form in art, nature and architecture. They are able to use geometric ideas to describe and analyze their world.
Some people say they are not good with shape or rather having poor spatial sense.The typical belief is that
some people either are or are not born with spatial sense. The writer simply disagree! The truth is
rich experiences with shapes and spatial relationships, when provided consistently over time, can and do develop spatial sense.

Where do you PLACE the numbers to gain VALUES??

When we discuss about PLACE VALUES, we are referring to the prior knowledge of the basic concept of 'Count by Ones' integrated to the Base-Ten concept. Dienes encouraged the use of variation in Mathematics Education.With Procedural knowledge, we are taught how to group the recorded place-value scheme, how numbers are written and how to say them.
According to NTCM Standard, "Making a transition from viewing 'ten' as simply the accumulation of 10 ones to seeing it both as 10 ones and as 1 ten is an important first step for students toward understanding the structure of base-ten number system".
  • The conceptual knowledge of place value consists of the base-ten grouping ideas.
  • When a collection of objects is grouped in sets of ten and some leftover singles, counting the groups of ten and adding the singles tells how many are in the collection.
  • There can be equivalent representations with fewer than the maximum groupings.
  • The base-ten grouping ideas must be integrated with oral and written names for numbers.
  • In addition to counting by ones, children may use two other ways of counting ; by groups and by singles separately and by terns and ones.All three methods of counting are coordinated as the principal method of integrating the concepts, written the names, and the oral names.