These past 3 weeks of my math course...
Before I started
this course, I was very nervous. I would always consider myself as being not good at math. I struggled with
completing a lot of the questions on the pre-math assessment. I felt ashamed of how little math I knew on the assessment. The image below represents my score on the pre-assessment on Vretta. I came into the course with the belief that I would be a bad math teacher. I felt that I would lead my students into failure with not understanding mathematics myself.
 |
| Pre-Assessment Score of Vretta Math Test |
Changed Learner Forever!
Week one of my math course 8P29 changed my perception on how I view myself as a learner in mathematics. The professor
Rebecca Bunz changed my perception of how math should be taught. She made me realize that I do not have to be good at something to
be a good teacher. The first thing that I have taken out of these last couple
of weeks in the course is that everyone can succeed in math. The article Setting Up Positive Classroom Norms in Math
Class to Promote a Growth Mindset by Jo Boaler http://www.youcubed.org/wp-content/uploads/Positive-Classroom-Norms2.pdf helped me to realize in order to be
a good math teacher I have to start by changing my own beliefs how I view myself as a math learner. This article encourages teachers to promote a growth mindset in math by
changing people’s philosophies towards math. For example, instead of fostering
that I am not good at math, changing that belief to “everyone can learn math to
the highest levels” (Boaler, p. 1). Reflecting on this article made me realize
that if I want to foster a growth mindset in my students towards math I have to
foster it in myself first. If students hear me say that I am not good at math, they might start believing the same thing about themselves and not attempt
to even learn math.
Real-Life Applications and Math
Another thing that I learned these
past weeks is the importance of applying real-life examples when teaching math.
The YouTube video by A Learning Place a Teaching Place https://youtu.be/TW_RQXWiCFU describes what relational learning is in mathematics.
I learned that it teaches the reasons why you are learning a theory of applying
certain tools in mathematics. It is important to teach bringing in the
relational learning method as I learned it brings value to math and helps
develop a growth mindset for learning mathematics. Students instead of not
wanting to learn math because they believe that they will never use it outside
of school, understand the importance of math and how they will use it every day. When I was in Elementary school, I would always ask
why I needed to learn certain steps in math. I was always told
by my teachers and parents to stop asking so many questions and that it should
not matter because I just need to memorize the formula for the test. This made me feel that it
was not important to learn math. I realized later when I got older knowing the basics of math is vital in completing day to day tasks. For example, pay bills or planning budgets. As a
result, I want to bring real-life examples into my class to
help my students not only understand the real-life applications but also have
fun while learning math.
Next Coming Weeks
In the next coming weeks, I will continue to blog about my experience throughout my 8P29 math course. Please write a comment and share any real-life applications that you have used in a math lesson!References
A Learning Place A Teaching Place. (2014 May 4). Instrumental or Relational Understanding of Mathematics. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/TW_RQXWiCFU.
Jo Boaler. youcubed at Stanford University. Retrieved from http://www.youcubed.org/wp-content/uploads/Positive-Classroom-Norms2.pdf
