Finale

Before this class began, I couldn’t help but be nervous about teaching math. While I participated in our online math refresher course I was filled with so many emotions of doubt and anxiety. I hadn’t worked with many of these math concepts in years, so seeing them for the first time had me feeling uncomfortable, with the thought of teaching these concepts to a group of junior/intermediate students.  I found the refresher course to be beneficial but I wasn’t really fond of the way that it was structured. I think that it was a little crazy to have us jump in to math questions and concept right away, with our some sort of review before hand. I understand that they wanted to see how much prior math knowledge that each of us possessed, but I think that the way that this course was structured, many of us ended up feeling uncomfortable coming into math class.

Upon completing the math refresher course, I felt a little bit better about my math capabilities but I also wondered if I was the only one that felt this way about teaching math in general, and the refresher course. One the first day of class, I was immediately comforted by hearing that the majority of my colleges had similar feelings towards teaching math and the refresher course. It’s nice to know that you are not the only one this way. Pat also gave the class words of encouragement, hoping to change our opinions towards math to a positive math mindset and I must say, this helped me a great deal. I knew that changing my mindset towards math would not be easy but as the semester proceeded, working through our activity presentations, blogs, forums, and lesson plan, I can say that I now have a much more positive mindset towards math.

I think that one of the most important things that I have taken away from our math class is learning to have a growth mindset. In my experience as a teacher thus far, I have learned the importance of promoting a growth mindset within the classroom because many of the student that I will be teaching will have similar doubts and uncertainties about math, as I had as a student growing up. I have learned that one of the best ways to show students that they all have the ability to do mathematics is to provide them with manipulatives to help them gain deeper understanding of mathematical concepts. In class, Pat always did an amazing job of providing us with a variety of manipulatives such as blocks, shapes, toothpicks, and literally anything else you can think of to help us work through problems and build our confidence in math, to show us that we are all capable of doing this. This is something that I would definitely like to bring with me to my classroom.

Throughout the class, I feel as if I have grown so much as a teacher. I have learned many new strategies and concepts in this class.  I have learned how to use manipulatives effectively and how to incorporate them into my lesson plans and activities so that students can gain deeper understanding of mathematical concepts and idea.  I have learned about the many resources that are available to math teachers online and because of this, I have become more comfortable with planning lessons for my students in the future. Overall, I must say that in my experience in our math class has changed my perspective on math from a negative one to a positive one. I now have a growth mindset when it comes to math and that I something that I would definitely like to promote to my students.

Thanks, 

Kevin

Data and Probability

We have now finished up week 11 of math class and yet again, I am amazed at the various ways in which we can introduce mathematical topics and procedures to our students.  It is my goal to try and make math interesting and exciting, as I hope to change the negative perceptions about mathematics, to positive ones within my classroom.

In class this week, Pat brought in a jar filled with Oreos. I was immediately intrigued because I knew that we were about to engage in a fun activity that involved food.  For this activity we were supposed to use estimation to make an education guess on how many cookies were in the jar. We passed the jar around the class and people came up with their own unique strategies on estimating how many cookies were in the jar. Some people counted the cookies on one face-side of the jar and then used multiplication for the other sides of the cube to come up with an answer. Others, estimated how many Oreo’s came in a pack and tried to use that total to determine how many packs of Oreo’s Pat had added to the jar. Those are just some of the many strategies students used to come up with a number. Once everyone came up with their estimation, we placed our answers on a stem and leaf plot to visually see how our data was collected. Through this data, we could see the statistics of all of our numbers, such as the average number, the median, and the mode. I think that this activity was great because we use estimation all of the time in our daily lives and sometimes I think that we don’t even realize that we are doing it. I think that it’s important to show our students the many ways that we use estimation in our daily lives and give them useful examples like this.

Data collection is an important skill to possess. The textbook discusses the importance of organizing and sorting your data and creating appropriate questions when collecting your data, so that you gather your information in the best way. The image below shows the use of linking cubes to looks for patterns, make predictions, make comparisons, and make decisions. In class we have used linking cubes a lot to work through mathematical problems. I think that manipulatives such as linking cubes are a great way for students to engage in data collection because they are able to physically see and work with the different types of data that these cubes can represent. 

While browsing YouTube I found a fun and interesting video about Yoda and how he is teaching young Luke Skywalker to have a grown mindset. In the video Yoda tells Luke to “unlearn what you have learned”. Luke replies saying, “ Alright, ill give it a try” and Yoda says “ No! Try not! Do or do not! There is no try”. This scene is very relative to my experience in our class thus far. I feel like I have had to unlearn some of the “old” ways of math and I have had to have a growth mindset to tell myself I can do this!