Developing Confidence and Comprehension

Abstract

Marvelous, malicious, monstrous, mind-boggling, magical, miserable, magnificent, morbid. These words were amongst numerous positive and negative adjectives playfully brainstormed by my Grade 8 students to describe their feelings and responses when presented with the general topic of mathematics. As my students contributed ideas during our word gathering session, I noticed a great deal of emotion, especially with the addition of the more negative words, and I had to energetically encourage the addition of positive descriptors.