Summary and Synthesis

I have learned so many new and interesting concepts this semester through math methods, such as constructivism. I have learned that it is important to be a constructivist teacher when teaching math because students need to learn how to do mathematics on their own. They need support and guidance also, but helping them to actually do mathematics is the best thing for them. When students learn new concepts on their own they make meaning out of it and learn much better. Using prior knowledge to help construct new knowledge is extremely important and can be used to help students develop new ways of thinking about math. Constructivism is just one of the many different concepts that I have learned this semester. Another concept that I have dealt with is finding areas of different shapes and polygons. I have used my own prior knowledge to help me with finding area formulas and coming up with algorithms for areas of polygons. Pick's Theorum is just one of a few methods that I learned for finding the area of a polygon. I found it to be very useful and easy to use. Throughout this class, I have been required to think on my own and find answers to questions that I did not know before. This entire course is based in constructivism and it truly does help in the learning process.