Teaching
I believe there are three key ingredients to learning: making connections, participation, and reflection. Knowledge construction comes naturally when students have opportunities to meaningfully connect new knowledge with prior knowledge (Ormond, 2007). Students need to be able to encode and process new information by relating that new information to prior experiences or prior knowledge. Learning is best accomplished by doing, by actively participating, instead of listening to another person tell you something about a topic (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Students need to have opportunities to interact both with their peers and with content. Learning is also aided by reflection (Dewey, 2008). We learn through experience, but not just through experience; we learn by reflecting on our experiences. Reflecting on an experience means the careful inspection of that experience, moving outside of the experience to gain a better understanding of the experience. These three key ingredients to learning are also teaching practices that I regularly implement into my teaching. I strive to incorporate these teaching practices into any class I teach, whether that class is designed for mathematics students or for preservice teachers. Not only do these teaching practices provoke and encourage students’ learning, but they also help students become more powerful problem solvers and communicate mathematics more effectively, two processes promoted by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2000). Strengthening students’ problem solving skills means that students are able to tackle difficult problems by developing, implementing, and reviewing solutions. Building students’ mathematical communication means that students are able to understand and express mathematical argument and justification, both oral and written. Making meaningful connections, actively participating, and purposefully reflecting are three key ingredients to learning and essential teaching practices.
I've recently taught MATH 107, Fundamentals of Mathematics I and MATH 108, Fundamentals of Mathematics II. These are FASCINATING courses for preservice elementary teachers! The primary topics of the courses are number and operation (e.g., place value and fractions) and geometry (e.g., shape and measurement). The link below will take you to the syllabus for my current course.
I've recently taught MATH 107, Fundamentals of Mathematics I and MATH 108, Fundamentals of Mathematics II. These are FASCINATING courses for preservice elementary teachers! The primary topics of the courses are number and operation (e.g., place value and fractions) and geometry (e.g., shape and measurement). The link below will take you to the syllabus for my current course.