Summary and Synthesis

The biggest impact made so far in the class is that teachers must find ways to engage their students and get them to think for themselves. There are many different ways to go through the process of solving a problem. There is not one set way to do it – the students should use strategies that they know and be able to explain the way in which they have solved a problem. The activities and discussions that we have had in class support this. When doing the handshakes problem, digits needed, and triangle activity people used several different strategies to complete the task. We were able to explain our reasonings and the strategies varied. The hardest thing to do is to think about what we are doing and actually explain the process without skipping any of the steps. This is especially true when we are using formulas to solve problems. We are so used to just plugging in numbers to find an answer. We need to actually think about why we are using the numbers we do and why they give us the answer they do.