decimals can be fun a reflection to paper

paper's title: A Concrete Situation for Learning Decimals
 by Puri Pramurdiani

Decimal has been become material that haunted students’ mind. They barely know the concept behind it. Some students even just understand how to solve a problem when the teacher already gave an example, and all the answers were done based on that example.

Students’ tend to not understand about it at all because they were didn’t know about the concept of it, when and where they should use the decimals. So, this paper practically help the teacher to teach decimal, thus make the students more aware how to use it, and where should they use it.

This paper gave a sequence of activities how to teach decimals, starting from the daily activity context where students need to use it up to students understood the meaning of two-digit decimal.

The situasional level which been used in this paper was the context of weighing acale and measuring th weight of fruit, body mass, rice, and the volume of certain beverages. those weighing activities proven to be efective in bridging the context and concept of decimal number.

The activity which been used by reseacher was developed in an HLT which is shown below:

1.       Knowing the students’ pre knowledge of numbers by playing come closer game. This activity let the students understand between two number.

2.       Knowing the existing of decimals in between two consecutive numbers by measuring and comparing the result of weighing of things (duku and body) using weighing scale analog and scale. This activity was as a bridge of concept and context. Where the student would find the decimals through weighing activity.

3.       Knowing the meaning of one-digit decimals (partition base tenth) by measuring the weigh of rice. In this activity students are aimed to be able to explore one-digit decimals and put them on the number line

4.       Knowing the meaning of two digit decimal as number which is exsist between two concecutive ome-digit desimal by measuring the volume of beverages.

As a conclusion in her paper, Puri gave a recommendation to use RME as the basic approach to learn desimals. By using those activities, students’ can grasp the not only the concept of decimals itself but also the context of it. Therefor, the learning activities become more meaningful for the students.

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