Oral presentations in Maths

Seto, C. (2002). Oral presentation as an alternative assessment in mathematics. In D. Edge & B. H. Yeap (Eds.), Mathematics education for a knowledge-based era (Vol. 2 Selected Papers, pp. 33-39). Singapore: Association of Mathematics Educators.

Background

One aim of mathematics education in Singapore schools as spelt out in the Primary Mathematics Syllabus 2001 is to enable pupils to use mathematical language to communicate mathematical ideas and arguments precisely, concisely and logically.

Aims

The aim of this small study was to look at how students could be helped to talk about maths. This would help their teacher understand what concepts they really understood.

Sample

The 37 students in the Primary 4 class were generally average to above average in their maths ability. They were generally more comfortable speaking Mandarin than English. At the time, they were preparing for upcoming examinations.

Method

Instead of giving only written practice for the examinations, their teacher (the writer) decided to replace three of the written practice tests with oral presentations.

Findings

In the first attempt, the students were not very communicative, hardly talking to each other in their groups. For their presentations, they uttered little more than one sentence. Some even complained that the lesson was more like an English than a maths lesson. However, the teacher did learn the students did not have full understanding of fractions and decimals as shown by their placement along a number line. A follow-up task confirmed this. After further instruction and discussion regarding these concepts, the students did a second presentation where they were asked to give examples of real-life number lines. The groups worked hard together and presented a variety of number lines. In the third presentation, the students compared ¾ kilo of peanuts with ¾ of the peanuts and stated whether they were the same or different and why. The groups came up with different answers. However, what was important was that students had learnt to listen to each other and revise their opinions when presented evidence by others. Subsequent test results showed improvement.

Implications

The oral presentations gave the teacher insight into the thinking of the students, enabling her to tailor subsequent instruction to meet their needs. Students were able to identify their misconceptions and correct them. The disadvantage was that the presentations had to be done in order giving an unfair advantage to those who did the later presentations.

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