Personal Concerns and Next Steps

Going into this class was imtimidating to me as I have always struggled in this area. Growing up math has always been done the traditional way of coming up with the answer and everyone was taught the same and seemed to me it was a much easier. This class allows the student to think cognitively and bring their own knowledge and concepts into the classroom and connect that knowledge with mathematics. I know the emphasis is on what the student can do rather than what they can't do but seems to me doing it this way, there are so many different ways of coming up to one solution that it has become difficult to teach. I feel there are so many different understandings and concepts to teaching these methods and maybe it would be easier for the student who is struggling but I haven't quite grasped it all yet and certainly don't feel comfortable as of yet in teaching it. Sometimes the new ways are better and students feel more at ease learning what they are capable of, so as this class progresses, I intend to continue to have an open mind and do what is best for the students when I become a teacher.

CGI

The videos we watch in class about CGI teaching were helpful in understanding what a cognitively guided instruction classroom would be like. The presentations on addition/subtraction and multiplication/division were helpful. I now know how and why its important to create different types of problems for children. Its also important to make the problems relevant to the students lives. In a CGI classroom, children naturally use a model that suites their style to solve the problems with out the teacher's rote instruction. After students solve the problem, they communicate with the rest of the class on how they solved the problem, what tools they used, and their answer. A variety of methods will be discussed before the class moves on to another problem. CGI is a good instructional strategy that I plan to use in my classroom. It's important for a teacher to build on the child's knowledge and to meet them where they at and to take what they already know and push them to the next level of mathematics.