Big Ideas

I think sometimes as teachers, we all get a little too involved in making sure that we cover every single little detail of the curriculum - and there are definitely some details we have to take in! I recently got an updated Social Studies Curriculum booklet and was shocked to see that since my time at Althouse, it had more than doubled in size! There's a lot to cover, and every time the curriculum changes, there seems to be more that we need to teach to ensure our students have gotten the best.

Sometimes these small little things almost seem to cover the fact that overall, we have Big Ideas we want our students to come away with. So when planning our lessons, we need to ensure that we are using Big Ideas.

The three reasons why understanding and using big ideas is important for planning in mathematics I found through reading that really spoke to me were:

• That students will be able to eventually connect these “big ideas” or concepts to their prior and future learning (mentioned in both readings), which will help with keeping that mathematical idea alive having so many ways to connect the big idea;

• That students will have the opportunity to take away their own ways of strategizing and using the “big ideas” instead of being handed smaller bits and pieces and being told what to use and when;

• Allowing the student to see “the big picture” and thus allowing them to “make connections that allow them to use mathematics more effectively and powerfully. The big ideas are also critical leaps for students who are developing mathematical concepts and abilities” (Number Sense and Numeration, Grades 4 to 6, page 12). From this I took that our students will have a greater control over their learning of the concepts, which in turn will give them the power to use their math knowledge in more ways than just in math class.

I have been in a lot of different classrooms over the last few months as an Occasional Teacher, and you can definitely tell who has been trying very hard to use the “big idea” framework with their math, and it’s neat seeing the students come up with their own ways of solving math “problems” (one school I go to has Friday Morning Trivia every week, and it’s always a blast whether I am in grade one or grade five seeing their brains try and figure out the best solution!), but I also see how crazy and all over the place it can be. I can try and scaffold and guide them more in the right direction, but some students are so set in their awesome and creative minds, that it can be difficult!

There’s also the perception in society that we are not teaching “real math” anymore, which I think is hard to discredit when someone could walk into a math class and see students strategizing around a “big idea” rather than quietly sitting at their desks doing rote math activities. But, in that vein, I think of how in my elementary math days you could ask your teacher why we do something a certain way, and just get an answer of, “because, you just do” rather than having the “big idea” of why or how. This did not give a lot of students the connection to the bigger picture that is needed in order to retain the learning and find ways to use it outside of school (or further in school by studying math past the time you “had” to).

How will you be bringing "Big Ideas" into your classroom planning? 

What "Big Ideas" do you find your students catching onto better than others?

Resources Consulted:
Ministry of Education. (2003). A Guide to Effective Instruction in Mathematics: Kindergarten to Grade 3 (pp. vii-ix). Queen's Printer for Ontario. Retrieved July 6, 2018, from http://www.edugains.ca/resourcesLNS/GuidestoEffectiveInstruction/GEI_Math_K-3/K_3_NumberSenseNumeration.pdf

Ministry of Education. (2006). Number Sense and Numeration, Grades 4 to 6: Big Ideas (Vol. 1, pp. 11-13). Queen's Printer for Ontario. Retrieved July 6, 2018, from http://www.edugains.ca/resourcesLNS/GuidestoEffectiveInstruction/GEI_Math_K-6_NumberSenseNumeration_Gr4-6/NSN_vol_1_Big_Ideas.pdf