New Insights and Their Implications

Math has never been my favorite subject, it is fun when you understand it, however as I got to higher grades, and more difficult topics it seemed that my understanding dwindled (as did my interest level). I think that the reason why I have difficulty with math is that I never had a good basis to grow as a student. This class has taught me the importance of teaching math in a way different from how we were taught. Students need to be taught WHY we do the formulas WHY we do in math. On Thursday (Sept, 27), this really became evident to me because students need to know why they are using the formula for the area of a triangle. In my education, my teachers stopped at just telling us the formula. I think these insights mean that I need to teach math differently from how I learned. I want my math class to investigate math, and make sense of mathematics rather than telling them how to do it. Math has become too much of an independent study that is only taught through completing assignments solely from a textbook. Learning math, I think, should be more broad and a group effort (at times). At first I think that this takes more effort and is time consuming, but it builds a core understanding of math which makes the more complex/difficult problems easier to complete.