I feel mathematics is a subject area with no real "free" support online unless you are working through tutorial sites and what not. This is certainly a subject area I feel teachers are not appropriately supported in because of the lack of willingness to exchange free resources (especially after being a teacher looking for resources). I feel there is something to be said for the people who develop resources in mathematics and hand them out, but ya-its not a wonder why teachers struggle to support mathematics for students in classrooms at times. I feel that the struggle is real and that I really learned a lot in this course in regards to creating, adapting, connecting resources. Even representing ideas from the way I see/understand it and putting it into a platform or format that students can access it.
I must say the biggest test in my readiness for teaching Mathematics would need to be the final project we needed to complete in which we needed to explain and share resources collected that ANY teacher could walk into a class and use with no prior knowledge or experience in mathematics. Funny how in British Columbia, this is generally how most Math gets taught (well if not on the mainland-for sure at the offshore schools when there are not enough teachers to go around). Nonetheless, I am looking forward to expanding my horizons and opportunities to teach things in the classroom I may not ever have expected to have taught before.
From the course, the general guidance of the professor and her positive feedback as well as “pizza project“ book that she had shared with me (I forgot to add that into my resource folder) but that was an exceptional read and would highly recommend it as well as taking this course and just reviewing module 1&2 carefully again. That was the biggest eye opening part of me-just the pedagogy of mathematics, very inspiring stuff.
A final not to all or any who are reading through. Good luck out there, it’s strange at times and tough a lot of the time when learning something new this late in the game that you might even have students who are stronger at tasks with that you. I’d also like to recommend taking the split class or a regular one any day-the possibilities for the enriched learning for the 7’s, that would have saved a colleague a lot of headache down the road. It also feels great when students say “ Oh, we learned that with .... last year!”
I get that in my English classes with a few teachers, best feeling!
One thing added to this post that I was not going to add until I saw it worthwhile (I certainly see it worthwhile now) was two questions we needed to ask about the course/concepts learned to the professor,
1) How do students best make the jump from concrete understandings and applications to more theory and thought based concepts?
A: I see moving from concrete to abstract as "fading" instead of a "jump". The symbolic/abstract is only meaningful if students have truly conceptualized, and concrete and visual understanding is key in getting there. Cycling back to the concrete for every new layer of a concept is important (e.g., when learning operations with fractions, for example). That is why I love the Tap into Teen Minds resources about "concreteness fading" and the "progression" resources such as the "Progression of Fractions".
2) would it be reasonable to expect a grade 8 students could learn grade 9 linear functions, substitutions/factoring and graphing instead of just moving to an equation with more than e unknown variable?
A: As for your second question, I can barely get my 8s through the important aspects of the P&A curriculum by the end of the year according to my Board's Scope and Sequence document. We certainly get into graphing in grade 7 and 8 and I go into point of intersection of two rules when we get into solving equations later in the year.
One thing added to this post that I was not going to add until I saw it worthwhile (I certainly see it worthwhile now) was two questions we needed to ask about the course/concepts learned to the professor,
1) How do students best make the jump from concrete understandings and applications to more theory and thought based concepts?
A: I see moving from concrete to abstract as "fading" instead of a "jump". The symbolic/abstract is only meaningful if students have truly conceptualized, and concrete and visual understanding is key in getting there. Cycling back to the concrete for every new layer of a concept is important (e.g., when learning operations with fractions, for example). That is why I love the Tap into Teen Minds resources about "concreteness fading" and the "progression" resources such as the "Progression of Fractions".
2) would it be reasonable to expect a grade 8 students could learn grade 9 linear functions, substitutions/factoring and graphing instead of just moving to an equation with more than e unknown variable?
A: As for your second question, I can barely get my 8s through the important aspects of the P&A curriculum by the end of the year according to my Board's Scope and Sequence document. We certainly get into graphing in grade 7 and 8 and I go into point of intersection of two rules when we get into solving equations later in the year.
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