Final Blog Post

Based on the vision I elaborated on last week, I want math to play a constant role in my classroom. I think math is very important and does not always come easy to every student. For those students I want to be able to supply different methods of solving different types of problems. Two types of instruction I have seen in my classroom is done with addition and subtraction. One method has the students borrowing and the other method has them rounding the number to the nearest tenths place. 

I want to be able to try and include math in many parts of every day things. I want my students to be able to make connections between math and their own lives. I watched a video in Literacy today that included a teachers morning routine. For her attendance and lunch count she added up the number of students in each row and would ask the students "what is 2+2, or 2+4" etc. 

After doing my artifact analysis I learned how important it is to make sure you have models and manipulatives in your classroom. Many students might be visual learners. It is important that you have engaging models and manipulatives that allow students to get hands on and practice learning through their own mistakes and practices. 

I really want to try and avoid using worksheets in my classroom. I know sometimes it can be good to get students brains activated and challenged by doing timed worksheets. But I think this is once they have already learned something and don't have anything else to work on. This can be boring and only students to learn through memorization. I want to create high level tasks. I hope that I can create word problems that allow my students to make connections to other math tasks and that they are actually doing mathematics and using equations to solve problems. I want to give my students the opportunity to expand their minds and show me the different techniques that they use to solve problems.