Personal Concerns and Next Steps

I have a hard time following what we are supposed to do for this class. Many times when I come for class I wonder if I have everything prepared. So far I have had very good luck with keeping up, but at times I think I am missing something. I understand that you have three classes in a row but there are assignments and suggested materials, and its hard to tell what you want prepared. My next step is to figure out your style. I may be over reacting and I just have to get used to how you run the class, but for now I am very nervous that I will miss something. I look forward to class everyday and hope that I am fully prepared. I look forward to the rest of the semester and can't wait to learn more about constructivism in math!

Personal Concerns and Next Steps

I will be straight forward and say that math is my least favorite subject. I have never been good at it and it has ALWAYS been a struggle with me. I have just always found it hard to connect ideas and honestly, just be interested in learning it. I find it very hard to believe that we will use any of this in the future (besides teaching it to other students), so I have always found math as almost pointless. This class, however, is unlike any other math class I have taken. It is more based around "constructivism" instead of instuction and plugging in things to a formula. If I do not understand something in math, it is very easy for me to give up and not try. This has always been a problem of mine with this subject. My steps for this class is to try my hardest to understand what we talk about in class and truely make sure that I am on the same page as everyone else. It is just hard when everyone in the class understands and you are the only one that is clueless. I will, however, make a better effort in approaching this subject with an open mind and will make it a point to come in for help if I truely am still lost in the subject matter. All I can promise is to try my hardest and we will see where that goes. Fingers crossed!

How has this course changed or not changed your perceptions of teaching math?

This course has so far completely changed my perceptions of how I will teach math to my future students. Thus far, I never questioned how I would teach math because I never before saw a flaw in the way that I was taught. However, being that this course requires me to think so much more in depth than I ever had to in my elementary, middle, or even high school days, I have realized that I was probably not taught the best way. I personally like the new way that I am being taught to teach, because I think that it is a better way for my future students to learn. When students need to use their peers and their own mind when learning, I think that the actual learning process is then better than just having a teacher stand at the front of the class and talking about concepts. This new way of teaching will in my mind be better because it allows students to connect concepts instead of just move on front one concept to the next.

New Insights and Their Implication

I thought that this course would be way over my head at the start of the semester, but I enjoy doing activities and problem-solving strategies that are still challenging but still have a relation to teaching elementary students. I am looking forward to the rest of the semester and though the two big projects will be challenging they will be beneficial and a good way for us to stay responsible and hold leadership for ourselves in this class. I have especially enjoyed the 'laft' activity in relation to the optimal mean concept because I had no idea we would be learning about standard deviations and understanding formulas by simply estimating a spot on the 'middle' of the laft where a certain number lies. These situations will help us instruct our future students and be able to find ways of explaining various reasoning strategies and math implications in ways they are familiar and comfortable with. I believe this course will be still a challenge for me but it will be good to be forced to take the type of math we are learning to think about it as if I would be teaching my class someday!

New Insights and Their Implication

Before taking this class, I had heard some pretty interesting stories. I heard it would be one of my biggest challenges so far in my college career. So, I braced myself for quite the adventure. I really really enjoy math and all of the concepts that go along with it. This class is very different than any other math class I have taken in the past. A lot of the learning happens on our own time through reading. I have found this class to be pretty challenging because it is not straight forward like other classes and we are required to think critically and problem solve on our own. My favorite part of class so far was the activity we did last week that involved mean standard deviation with the washers and the sticks. It was a good hands on activity and it was an activity that I learned a lot about. This was an activity that I grasped very well and was able to ask intriguing questions about! I was on the top of my game this day in class! I look forward to the rest of the semester because this math class really teaches us how to get children to think about math in a different way. The class forces us to think like a kid again, and that in itself is pretty fun!

New Insights and Their Implications

Before starting this class I knew that teaching math would not be one of the easiest tasks. I especially thought it would be challenging but rewarding at the same time. Since starting this methods class I realized that it truly takes more than just knowing how to do a math problem to teach math. It takes knowing the steps, how you came to such steps, and why you chose to use those steps. As our teacher you told us at the beginning of the semester that this class would be especially challenging to us and that mahy of us may struggle for somewhat of the semester. I believe you are right. I do not think that any of us have been taught math quite like this class, and from the sounds of it many of us still feel kind of lost. Every day that I come to class I learn something new and that really makes me happy. I am tired of sitting through boring education classes learning nothing. If I wanted to waist my money this way I would be addicted to gambling. I am hoping that this class allows me to teach math in ways that teachers have been failing to do for quite some time. Hopefully this method will boost the knowledge of math and the feeling towards math, resulting in better scores and knowledge. I think this class has a great constructivist view, and I am hoping to start seeing more benifits from learning this way soon!

New Sights and their Implications

I have never been a huge fan of learning math, however when I understand how to do a math problem I tend to enjoy it. Before this class I thought of elementary math as adding/subtracting and simple concepts like that. I expected this class to be about how to teach students how to do these concepts and learn facts about math. However, Dr. Reins has a completely different take on teaching math. At first, it was frustrating to learn because I am used to being taught a formula or equation and doing the problem. We were forced to think backwards and try to make connections which is hard for me to do. I do however feel that this is a great way to teach elementary mathematics. If students learn right from the beginning how to make connections and why formulas are what they are, students will most likely understand these concepts and realize how they are relevant in the real world. I hope to take from this class what Dr.Reins is doing and be able to help my students make connections on their own in math.

New Sights and Their Implications

My experiences with have been more so up and down. I catch on to some things in math easier than others. Basically math and I have never been a good match. But I have learned recently that when teaching math to the elementary school students is that we need to have the them see the connections. Like seeing how mean can be describe differently than just adding up all the numbers and then dividing by that number. Teaching the students about mean absolute deviation, standard deviation, also even using median, and mode. I may not be explaining this well but all these things are connected to each other one way or another, but it does depend on how you present these areas to the students. Also this class is making you think on the other side rather than what you already know based on what you were taught. This kind of thinking is hard to do and does make learning a little confusing until you catch on. The important thing is to ask for help when not fully understanding what it is being taught. It is interesting to learn from a different view point that can help students better compared to the way most of us have been taught in the past.

New Insights and Their Implications

I have disliked Math ever since I was a little kid.  I have dreaded every math course because they are always alike; completing problems out of the book or worksheet.  However, this is the first math class that I find somewhat interesting.  It requires us to use metacognition and deeper thinking.  This is a challenge for almost everyone because it is so much different than what we are used to.  My head was spinning the first couple of days but after I believe that I am now beginning to fully grasp that all mathematics connect to one another.  This new concept will help me become a better teacher and hopefully allow my students to understand mathematics better.  

New Insights and Their Implications

Math has never really been my favorite subject ever. So when I signed up for this class, I was a little hesitant and really didn't want to have to take it. I wasn't really sure what we would be doing and just expected everything to be out of the textbook and not really doing problems and activities in the classroom. I have learned a lot of different fun activities you can do with your classroom dealing with math. And the input from other classmates really helps me to understand a concept I maybe wasn't too certain about. That is an aspect of this class that I do like. Not everything is done by the teacher, he expects us to do the work and even go up to the board like today and explain ourselves. My favorite activity to date is the one we did with mean. By first having to figure out without any math what we think the mean is and then putting the washers on them and hanging them up to see where it was even. This is something I learned a lot from and was fun to work on too. Sometimes some of the stuff we do in this class are way over my head, but continually doing activities like that, I think should really help with my understanding of math so I can teach it better to my students.

New Insights and Their Implications

Math has always been a subject that I have struggled with. I think it is in large due to teachers making me memorize formulas and ways of solving problems, but not putting any meaning behind it. So far in this class we are learning the process of math problems and the reasons why we get the answers we do. Explaining how we come up with methods of solving problems is helping me understand why and how we come up with the correct answers. Learning this in class will help me to teach my students, so they can understand the process of math and hopefully have a better time learning it than I did!

New insights and implications

Math was never my strongest subject. I believe it is because I was taught to plug numbers into formulas without ever knowing the why or how of math. Throughout this course thus far, I have gained the perspective that math can be figured out without just being handed a formula. For example, today (9/22), we learned how to find the area of a triangle without just being handed the formula and told to plug in the numbers.

New Insights and Their Implications

Math has always been a subject that has come easily to me. Throughout my education, I have memorized formulas, and use them correctly to find the answers. After starting this class, I have found out that formulas are not everything. There needs to be a reason for the formula and an explanation for why. I understand that everything connects to each other. This class had made me think of different ways to solve problems, and sometimes it may take more work for me to understand because I am not used to this kind of concept. However, through learning these new concepts, I will be able to teach children at a younger age. When the concept actually comes up in later grades, they already have some understanding and it will be easier for them.

New Insights and Their Implications

Math is a subject that has always taken me a little more time to grasp than it may have for some others. I was never a bad student in math, I just had to work harder than some other people who, I felt, just 'got it.' Within the first few days of taking this course, I began to realize why I did not immediately understand the new concepts that I was taught in school. We were always supposed to memorize formulas, that all looked similar to me, and were never told why the formulas were that way. We just had to know them. I realize now that math was difficult for me because I struggled to make connections from one concept to another in higher math education. I have learned in this class that these connections are what gives a person the ability to truly understand math. The implications of this simple concept are huge. Learning how to help students form these connections will likely help me to become a better teacher in the subject of math, and will help my future students to become more proficient in the subject as well.

New Insights and Their Implications

I came into this class expecting to work out of the textbook or with worksheets, completing various math problems while also discussing how to teach these types of problems to K-8 students. It has been a little bit of a frustrating transition to thinking of math problems in this way because it is totally out of my comfort zone. I am a math person. I love math and I have always been relatively good at it, but this class makes me rethink that all together. It makes me realize that I really only learned math on a single level. So far, I really like this way teaching math. I am also a SPED major, so I am also thinking of how this type of teaching would help SPED students. Though it's tough for my brain to switch gears, I am really enjoying this new way of thinking about math problems.