Using visualisation in maths teaching

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• Using visualisation in maths teaching
  

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Visualise that. Thinking about visualisation - being able to see something mentally - in education.

About. This is an Open University web tutorial with exercises to explore and explain 'visualisation'. Imagery is a powerful force for perception and understanding. Being able to see something mentally is a common metaphor for understanding it. Visualising means summoning up a mental image of something. Some people can close their eyes and “see” a picture, but for others it has much more to do with imagining, than seeing. Try to picture a cube, the seven-times table, a graph of sin x. Now describe what you “see”...

Pedagogical content. This unit looks at visualisation^(ta) as it relates to mathematics, focusing upon how it can be used to improve learning. It also identifies ways in which to make more use of visualisation within the classroom.

Resource details
Title	Using visualisation in maths teaching
Topic	[[Topics/Visualisation|Visualisation]]
Teaching approach	[[Teaching Approaches/Visualisation|Visualisation]]
Learning Objectives	The learning outcomes for this unit are to: engage in a number of activities that involve visualisation and learn from your own experiences what it means; learn the views of a well-known mathematics educator talking about visualisation and to compare your views with those of other secondary-school mathematics teachers; learn ways that visualising could be incorporated into your classroom and consider resources that might be useful.
Subject	[[Resources/Maths|Maths]]
Age of students / grade	[[Resources/Secondary|Secondary]],  [[Resources/Primary|Primary]],  [[Resources/Higher|Higher]]
Table of contents	Learning outcomes Visualisation - a powerful force for perception and understanding Starters - visualisation exercises What does visualisation mean? In the classroom Conclusion - Next steps - References - Acknowledgements
Files and resources to view and download	Follow the link to a study unit with exercises as PDF documents http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=2524 (Part of the Teach and Learn series from the Open University)