Teach to Serve

Do you remember Riley H.? The Junior learner that we met in my other post? Well, today, I am going to further use Riley as an example and share a learning resource that I think it’s going to benefit Riley’s numeracy journey.

In my previous post, I shared that Riley is one of my tutoring students and I have been working with him to support his numeracy journey for the past 6 months. As a lot of us know, due to the current pandemic situation, there is a high demand of flexibility and adaptability in learning for both teachers and the learners. Because I was no longer able to have tutoring sessions with Riley in person, I had to be flexible and adaptable while we met online. If you recall, Riley loves Kahoot! He loves it whenever I incorporate in our time together. It’s a great assessment tool – good for diagnostic, formative, and even summative assessment. It’s also a fun tool for Riley to use it as a brain break. Depending on the day, I ensure I can maximize this tool to benefit Riley’s learning.

However, Kahoot is not the ONLY learning resource I love. During this pandemic, I was researching many other educational tools that I can use to enrich Riley’s learning and yet, I have learned that the good old YoutTube really did not disappoint me. It turned out to be very useful for Riley!

As mentioned before, Riley is very good at mental math and he has a great number sense. He is also a visual learner. But ironically, one of his weakness is spatial reasoning which means he has a hard time to imagine in three-dimensions and to move objects around in his mind. As such, he was really struggling when his math teacher at school started introducing “Transformation: translation, reflection, and rotation” to his class. I remember it was even harder to explain these concepts to him when we had a screen between us. Then, that was when I stumbled on this YouTube Channel – Planet Nutshell!

Specifically, Riley struggled to visualize the concept of Rotation in his head and this video was his lifesaver! I still remember he loved the video so much that he asked me to replay it to him multiple times throughout our session. He ended up watching the “Reflection” video and “Translation” video even though he had no trouble understanding those concepts. His favorite part is when the video sings “Math Short” and he would just laugh and beg me to replay that part over and over again.

In conclusion, I think this YouTube Channel – Planet Nutshell, the “Math Shorts” Series, is a great learning resource for students who need a bit more support with spatial reasoning, who are visual learner, and who enjoy the appeal to the video editing.

Thank you for tuning in! Hope you enjoyed!