BATTLING DENGUE

LOURD BRYAN I. GOZUN

We should all be reminded about our responsibilities to help stop the spread of common diseases like dengue. The rains are here again, so we have to ensure that our surroundings are clean.

Local government units should ensure that the medical needs of everyone are met so they can achieve prosperity that comes from a community with a healthy citizenry.

LGUs should hold seminars to discuss different types of diseases that commonly occur in a community such as dengue, measles and chickenpox and how to decrease the risk of having these kinds of diseases.

Actually, by simply washing our hands and maintaining cleanliness of households, we may already reduce the risk of common diseases. It must start within ourselves and apply it in our everyday lives.

Barangay Health Workers should also actively participate in the activities of the LGUs in disseminating health tips and promoting healthy living.

Meanwhile, the provincial government of Pampanga has been making headway in addressing the dengue problem in the province. In a report, dengue cases have decreased in the last three years.

The declining trend in dengue cases can be attributed to awareness and intervention efforts by all stakeholders concerned – the Dengue Task Force (DTF), composed of barangay captain, kagawad on health, school principal, BHWs and non-government organizations (NGOs) who have been tasked to educate the village folks on how to combat the dreaded dengue fever.

The DTF is also responsible in monitoring dengue cases in their areas and as well searching for mosquito breeding grounds.

Barangay folks, meanwhile, are required to submit breeding sites of kiti-kiti to the Rural Health Unit (RHU) every first Friday of the month, while the remaining Fridays of the month are intended for “Search and Seek’’strategy to defeat dengue.

Community efforts are slowly paying off but the public cannot be complacent as the mosquito-borne disease is painful, debilitating and fatal.

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The author is NDP (Nurse Deployment Program) under the Department of Health.

The author is

JUANITA E. PERALTA

Mathematics instruction, which does not help students build their formal knowledge on their informal knowledge, may cause students to develop two separate systems of mathematical knowledge.Standard written symbols play an important role in student learning of mathematics, but students may experience difficulties in constructing mathematical meanings of symbols. Students derive meaning for the symbols from either connecting with other forms of representations (e.g. physical objects, pictures and spoken language) or establishing connections within the symbol systems (Hiebert& Carpenter, 1992). The meaning of numerical and operational symbols-such as 2, -4, 3/ 4, 2.4, and + -are constructed by connecting with concrete materials, everyday experiences or language. For example, the symbol “+ ” takes meaning if it is connected with the joining idea in situations like “I have four marbles. My mother gave me five more marbles. How many marbles do I have altogether?” (Hiebert&Lefevre, 1986). Similarly, students frequently refer to 3/ 4 as three pieces of a pizza or cake that is cut into four pieces (Mack, 1990).

Although these representations facilitate learning written symbols, the potential for them to create understanding of written symbols is limited, since they are representations themselves. Students might have difficulty in understanding the meaning of a written symbol if the referents do not well represent the mathematical meaning or if the connection between the referent and the written symbol is not appropriate (Hiebert& Carpenter, 1992). For example, geometric regions are the models most commonly used to represent fractions. These models represent the part-whole interpretation of rational numbers. However, the symbol a/ b also refers to a relationship between two quantities in terms of the ratio interpretation of rational numbers. Similarly, it is used as a way of writing a/ b to refer to an operation. For this reason, teachers need to use other types of representations such as sets of discrete objects and the number line to promote conceptual understanding of the symbol a/b.

It is interesting to note that students who obtain incorrect answers for their written calculation are often able to find the correct answer by using concrete materials. However, when they are confronted with their written work, about half of these students kept their incorrect answer for written work. This discrepancy between the results obtained from working in two different settings reveals that students often cannot make connections between formal and informal mathematics (Lesh, Landau, & Hamilton, 1983). In another study, fourth graders who had connected decimal fraction numerals with physical representations of decimal quantities were more successful in dealing with problems that they had not seen before-such as ordering decimals by size and changing between decimal and common fraction forms-than students who had not made the same connections (Wearne &Hiebert, 1988). For these reasons, teachers should provide context to help students bring about their intuitive mathematical concepts and procedures, encourage them to argue whether they are reasonable, and guide them to make connections between their intuitive and formal mathematical concepts and procedures (Lampert, 1986).

Developing understanding in mathematics is an important but difficult goal. Being aware of student difficulties and the sources of the difficulties, and designing instruction to diminish them, are important steps in achieving this goal. Student difficulties in learning written symbols, concepts and procedures can be reduced by creating learning environments that help students build connections between their formal and informal mathematical knowledge; using appropriate representations depending on the given problem context; and helping them connect procedural and conceptual knowledge.

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Teacher III at Meycauayan National High School