The End is Here

"The only way to learn mathematics, is to do mathematics"

-Paul Halmos

Bitter-sweet moment, now that math class is complete.  Going into this course in September was highly nerve wracking; starting with the math refresher course and knowing literally nothing made me feel entirely ill prepared to teach students math.  Now only 3 months later, I am about to embark on a 2 month placement with grade 7/8's wherein I am responsible to teach the entire math unit.  The best part about this, is I feel prepared!

Throughout these 3 months, we all have been introduced to a plethora of fun and intriguing math activities that actually help you learn!  Further, I have learned some highly important lessons throughout this course to be mindful of when I am teaching my own students.

Math Lesson #1

Welcome differences!  

This is something I am entirely guilty of often neglecting.  This may be because in my own elementary school days, the way in which math questions were to be conducted had clear steps 1, 2, 3 and in the area where students were to "show your work" each step needed to be done exactly how it was taught in class, otherwise marks were deducted.  This however is outdated and hinders creativity and critical thinking!  If a student learns better by drawing a picture or a graph rather than through an algebraic equation then that's OK!

An effective way to promote differences in the classroom is through math talks.  This allows a space where students are encouraged to talk about the different ways they would answer a solution.  Not only does it bring confidence to students, but also can be insightful for students to view alternate ways in which they can answer equations.

Math Lesson #2

 Embrace and welcome mistakes!

Mistakes should never be highlighted as a sign of failure, this will only discourage students.  Mistakes are inevitable and will inevitably lead to higher learning.  This is way mistakes should actually be celebrated, reassuring your students that even you, as a teacher, will make mistakes and that's OK, it is a part of human development and we are never done developing.  An article by Edutopia, titled Teaching Students to Embrace Mistakes,  highlights the importance f changing student perceptions to embrace mistakes.

Math Lesson #3

Self assessments are OK!

I think it has become seemingly frowned upon to conduct self assessments in the classroom, due to the fact that students can be sometimes  dishonest.  However, this last class has taught me that marking can become overwhelming, and when this happens, continuous and effective assessment may not occur.  This is why having a system where students can mark their own work, while you set some boundary to ensure they are being truthful, can become the most effective for your own records.  This way, teachers can have multiple pieces of marked work to assess the level in which every student is working on.

Overall, I have been taught numerous valuable lessons that I will take me into my placement and future classroom in regards to math instruction.  Further, I have gained insight on multiple hands on math activities and online games that will be useful to make math more engaging.  While doing my math refresher online, I began to notice just how much of an impact this can have on learning.  The moments where the video was short and sweet and clearly simplified through images and videos, I was better able to pay attention and retain the information.  However, as the module became wordy and repetitive with questions not accompanied by anything, I became disengaged.  This resembles the same form as a math textbook, wherein questions are redundant and disengaging.