Personal Concerns and Questions

As the semester greatly speeds by, I cannot help but to notice the strength of enlightenment of this course. Growing up, mathematics was never my an academic advantage of mine. I found that efforts were greatly asserted to make the standard expectation. As I find myself taking Math Methods, it makes me feel very reassured that I can pursue a career and grow as an educator. If it was up to me, I would suggest that Math Methods was a course that was advised to be taken before the Math Concepts for Teachers courses. The reasoning is that those preliminary courses have a heavy emphasis on direct application much like every math class I have ever taken. Math Methods instills multiple strategies and perspectives that embraces the subject matter comprehension as opposed to presenting information and having students regurgitate the material. Other math classes can instill great anxiety merely because of the sensation of being left behind in understanding while the class moves on to the next topic. I believe that I would have succeeded immensely in college mathematics if I had taken this course before Math Concepts. I would like to see a shift in the school's advising so future students would not face the anxiety they felt in high school. Keep up the excellent work Professor Reins.

New Insights and their Implications

We have just been talking about factions and talking about how to bridge the gap between modeling manipulatives and use of regular assessments through instruction. I have clearly been able to understand when using correct manipulatives can help students “bridge the gap” of understanding a concept and applying the concept to homework assignments. Students that are able to see how and why we do this certain math problem like having a common denominator, have a clear understanding of the concept and will be able to retain the knowledge more. The use of manipulatives should be used religiously in a classroom for children to see a concept and correlate why we do this math concept this way. I also see where math manipulatives can be a hindrance in the classroom, like just having a manipulative for a time waster and not really relaying important concepts to the students building foundations for math concepts. I also really like the use of the pattern blocks as fraction pieces. I think students could really retain the knowledge a lot better when they can see and touch the fraction of the whole of an object.