Begin With Play

The article assigned to the MAT 641 class written by Peirre M. van Hiele "Begin with Play," could be renamed "Engagement is the Key to Success." I love how van Hiele's first strategy is to have the students self discover the ideas he is trying to get across. Having the students discover their learning will get "buy in" and they will recall the information much better than direct instruction.

I was very impressed by his stance and I am a firm believer in his argument on the first page. His passion that too often in Math, specifically geometry, we continue education when the student doesn't understand the prerequisite knowledge necessary to be successful for the current class. The funniest line of the article was when van Hiele quotes Piaget "giving no education is better than giving it at the wrong time." 

van Hiele's Levels: Visual - Descriptive - Informal Deduction - Formal/Proof:

Developing geometry must be done on a linear level. We need to think of it as more of a path to full understanding of geometry. With van Hiele's mosaic activity, students with taking a number of independent shapes and using them to achieve different goals. Van Hiele states instruction begins with an inquiry phase in which material leads children to explore shapes. From here educators can start introducing terms and characteristics. 

Van Hiele understands that learning is a process and should be treated as such. His insight on education should be adopted by all subjects not just geometry.