Kia Ora: End of Maths

It's official. Math has ended and we are beginning new classes. I am pretty sad about this because Math has been one of my favorite university classes I have taken. This is all due to Helen Walters. She was an AMAZING teacher. In New Zealand they call Math "Maths" with an "s" so it was funny to hear our teacher with her accent saying maths. It was especially funny when she told us to bring a rubber to class, a rubber in NZ means an eraser. When we tried to explain this confusion to her she was like oh ok sorry girls, bring an eraZor. haha. So a lot of the girls were still confused because they thought we needed to bring a razor.

Anyways. This class was amazing because our teacher was constantly having us do games, be involved, and be learning different fun activities that we could use to teach math to our future students. There was hardly ever a dull moment with her. It was really nice too because we were in class all day long from 8am-3:30pm JUST doing maths, and the only way we got through it all was because of the FUN activities she had us constantly doing. I swear I learned more information that I will USE in my future career than I have in any of my other classes back at home. It was a wonderful experience.

My favorite part for sure though was on our last day when we spent the whole day making Tapa cloths. Tapa cloths are Tongan cloths, like the one that we have hanging up on our wall in our apartment. They include different symmetric designs that deal with math in a variety of ways. So for our activity we made tapas out of paper, created our own design, painted them with dye, and then bleached out the different parts that we wanted white with bleach on q-tips. It was such a fun activity that I would love to do in my future classroom!

Our Maths teacher, Helen Walters

Margo has the HARDEST time staying awake in class.
Our teacher, towards the end, told us that she just let
Margo go because she couldn't get her to stay awake haha.

The beginning of our activities

Brittany could NOT get the paperclip to move, it was pretty funny.

Haha look out Brooke!

Gotta love math manipulatives

Measuring with our own traced feet

Activities, activities, and more activities. I will definitely use these in the future.

Brooke always bites her pretzels into words. It's cool isn't it?!!

One day when the sun decided to come out for lunch! Beautiful huh?

Yay for lunch breaks

I'm ADDICTED to The Hunger Games now.....I'm over halfway!

Now if that sun will just stay out so we can go to the beach.

Practicing writing upside down. It's harder than it looks.

Measurement activity

Our guys rocks, especially with his "sweet as" shirt!

Oh the life of a teacher

I actually did NOT like this activity. It was hard for all of us. It was an
activity that involved us being placed in the students position for when
they are trying to learn 1's, 10's, 100's...etc. They use it at teacher trainings
and it was hard!

Making Tapa Cloths!!!

The shell is a Maori design from one of our necklaces.

Cool huh?!

Every ones Tapa Cloths

Our BYU instructor, Ramona, is on the end on the left. Our Maths NZ teacher,
Helen, is on the right end-ish :)

Maori tongue

Our fun Study Abroad group!!

Look, a fake Tapa and a real one :)!

And now. . .let science and social studies begin. (I love Brooke's creation.)

What we do when it's not good enough weather outside
during lunch. All the spots for sun are taken up quickly!

Look! My bangs sort of worked-ish today. El-natural!

If you couldn't tell, this was on my head in the picture above. We were
working with creating these airplane things to move across the room
by only dropping it above our heads.