Вариант № 8

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MATHEMATICS TEACHERS FOR THE MATHEMATICS COMPONENT OF THE CURRICULUM

A Educators consider mathematics as one of the best media for the development of thinking skills. The often-heard opinion that a person who is good in mathematics could be a good chess player does not refer to computational ability but rather to reasoning ability. In the process of teaching mathematics, the teacher must be able to seize opportunities for developing the skills of reasoning, for developing in the children habits of organized thinking.

B Mathematics should not be regarded as an isolated body of knowledge. The teacher should be able to see mathematics in the environment and in other disciplines. This is pedagogically important, since the teacher must use or provide experiences or situations that are the starting points for children to discover and develop the inherent mathematics. In technical language, we say that a physical situation is used to introduce and develop a “mathematical model” of the reality of the situation. On the other hand, the teacher who can readily see mathematics in the environment may be able to point to those different situations to which similar mathematical descriptions apply.

C National drives and politics impact curricular programmes in mathematics. The teacher should become aware of national goals and policies and should then seek to bring about a closer relation between what is taught in the classroom and what is learned and done outside of it in terms of these national efforts, at least within the child’s surroundings or community. Examples might include development of the countryside, better nutrition improved health and sanitation, and population education. Economics oriented activities may be simulated in the classroom.

D Special teaching plans are needed to help a child understand “volume”, not only as something upon the button of a radio set, which is within the child’s experience, but also as a mathematical concept of the quantity of space occupied. Again, the younger children usually think of multiplication as repeated addition. They, therefore, may find it confusing to conceptualize 3/4 x 1/4, where repeated addition does not apply. The sensitive teacher who anticipates this difficulty would plan her teaching strategy to broaden the idea of multiplication before confusion arises. A similar situation arises when children are drilled in subtraction to use the following language:

10 take away 1 is 9. 10 take away 2 is 8. 10 take away 3 is 7.

The drill emphasizes the “take away” idea of subtraction to the exclusion of comparison (i.e., how much more, or how much less), which also invokes subtraction.

Media - среда	national drives - пути гос. развития
skills - умения	impact - воздействовать
seize - воспользоваться	nutrition - питание
habit – привычка	sanitation - оздоровление
inherent maths- чистая математика	invoke- обращаться к

Выберите ответ, соответствующий содержанию текста

1. How should a teacher of maths regard mathematics?

A … as an inherent mathematics	C … as a science connected to other disciplines
B … as an isolated body of knowledge	D …as a computational ability

Завершите предложение в соответствии с основной темой абзаца

2. The passage D is about

A … the definition of volume

B … the examples how to introduce adults to volume and subtraction

C … the mathematical idea of subtraction

D … how to introduce children to mathematical ideas