New Insights and Their Implications

This class has given me many tools I now would feel comfortable using while teaching math in the K-8 setting. The most useful tool I have accrued is a completely new style of teaching and a more effective style based on projects and higher level thinker. I have already begun experimenting with some of the new insights I have gained in an internship experience where I am working with two students who are struggling with math. I often find myself explaining how a mathematical property works and alternative routes can be used to find the solution. However, when I am working with them on their homework it is always a worksheet or a set of problem from the textbook. This concerns me because I am sure there are students who are passing the assignments and do not require addition help but are in fact missing the entire concept. These students will doubtfully struggle when more challenging mathematical problems are given to them, maybe years from now. The most helpful and probably most recent insight I have been exposed to is to make sure the students understand the how’s and the whys instead of learning rules without reason.