The Discovering Continues...

One year ago, I walked into our math class at Brock feeling nervous, apprehensive, and insecure. There was a definite sense of fear and doubt when I thought about the possibility of teaching math to twenty to thirty children. Over the course of the last year, my anxiety and fears about teaching math have shrunk and my confidence and excitement have grown. This week, I walked into our math class feeling eager to discover and explore more about teaching math in a way that is meaningful, effective, and fun for my future students!

Putting Knowledge into Action in the Classroom

The highlight of last year was being able to take what I had learned during our math course and put it into practice during my placement. I had the opportunity to co-teach a unit on geometry and our class, both the teachers and the students, had a blast! As we learned in our course last year, manipulatives are particularly important for developing students' geometric thinking and spatial awareness.  With this in mind, we pulled out the geoboards, toothpicks and marshmallows, tiles, and blocks and we filled our unit with open-ended problem-solving activities that encouraged our students to actively explore shapes and their properties. I quickly discovered that math can be a fun and rewarding subject to teach, and it was really encouraging and exciting to see hands-on, meaningful learning in action in the classroom!  

Fostering Curiosity and a Positive Attitude

One of the big ideas that I took away from our first week back is the importance of curiosity in learning. As teachers, it would be easy to simply tell our students the information that they need to learn, but this does not lead to students are engaged in meaningful learning or who are developing a love of learning. As the video from class emphasized, we need to encourage children to wonder. In the language that we use to speak to our students and in the lessons that we develop, we need to foster curiosity by encouraging our students to ask questions, to share ideas, and to take risks. 

© QuoteFancy. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2wSheFy

Another big idea from this week is the importance of fostering a positive mindset both in myself and in my students. As the videos this week demonstrated, adults and children alike often hold the misconception that there are two kinds of people in the world: math people and 'not-math' people. It's time to stop believing that lie! The reality is that every single student has the potential to succeed at math. Their attitudes and experiences, however, play a key role in determining their success. It's time to instill in our students the belief and the confidence that they are capable of success and that mistakes and challenges are an important and valuable part of their success stories. 

©  Reid Wilson. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1nzUoMC.

Looking Forward to More Growth

Knowing that students' experiences in the classroom have such a tremendous influence on their perceptions of math and their success in math, I am excited to continue to grow and evolve as a math teacher so that I can support my students in the best ways possible. As we participate in the in-class activities, webinars, and online modules and build our unit plans, I am looking forward to diving deeper into different strategies and approaches to teaching math in ways that help students to see math as fun, relevant, and valuable in their lives. I am eager to continue to discover how to promote curiosity, a love of learning, and meaningful math experiences in the classroom.