Reflection

• Explain your teacher research focus. What are you trying to understand about your work with young children as it relates to the learning area of math?
  
  Geometry and Spatial Sense is everywhere around us! Math is incorporated into our everyday lives and through this activity, the children can explore the shapes and further expand their own knowledge. Children may be able to connect their previous knowledge and make connections that demonstrate their understanding.
  
  
  Provide background information about the children and the early learning setting (as shared in the blog).
  
  
  The teacher in this blog first used a PowerPoint that fully described that shapes are everywhere. In the presentation, it showed examples of pictures and the children were to describe what shapes they saw. The children seemed to have a good understanding on shapes and were ready to explore the shapes in more depth. 
  
  
  Describe your process for collecting and understanding the data.
  
  
  We found the easiest ways to collect and understand our data was through Pinterest. We were able to work together and research through pictures, blogs and other sources. We pinned pictures and were always able to go back and refer to our research. The resources gave us ideas and inspired us to create a board based on Geometry and Spatial Sense. 
  
  
  Reflect on what you found and what you learned.
  
  
  We learned that children know about shapes and that shapes are all around us. We continued to look around our work environment and find shapes. We then commented that we never explore the settings. We found it interesting that most teachers used worksheets and cut-outs to give to the children, in order to teach Geometry and Spatial Sense. 
  
  
  Make recommendations for other teacher researchers. Discuss what it was like to do your project and how others in the field can apply your findings
  
  
  The project was fun and taught us a lot about math in our everyday life. Teachers should refer to Pinterest and other social media sites to learn about activities and understand the difference between being a constructivist teacher and a traditional teacher. Children learn best through using the constructivist approach and educators need to know about their students and view them as being fully capable. We applied our overall findings through a blog because we felt it helped to organize our research and it was easy to navigate. Educators should get out of their comfort zone and use different types of methods to teach their students.