Summary and Synthesis

I actually liked this last unit on fractions. I liked that we were able to work with different manipulatives like the pie pieces and fraction bars. Most of what I know (with Math) is due to rote style learning. I like that this last unit gave us different ways to teach fractions. I agree that teachers need to start showing their students how to develop an understanding of "why" to do things, rather than just doing things without a reason and just off of memorization. I believe that students will have a better chance of understanding and remembering different mathematical rules and operations if they understand why they are doing what they are doing. I liked learning about the CGI program as well and it was nice to watch the video to see the classroom with that learning approach. I think that it is important to give students many options when solving problems and I thought this unit did a great job of showing us future teachers how to achieve that goal in our own classrooms!

Summary and Synthesis

We have been learning about addition and subtraction problem types. I have never heard of join, separate, part-part whole or compare.I think this is an interesting way to look at problems. It took me awhile to understand the differences of and what each one meant. These four are different structures of a problem and they describe the way a number sentence will be written. This is good for teachers because they know where to start when giving their students addition and subtraction problems. The teacher will also know what types of problems to give to the students and also what types of problems the student struggles with.