First Impressions

[Hailey Nugent]

I found the way that these concepts were taught were beneficial and interesting. They were different from the ways that I was taught in high school, however I found them to be beneficial, going one step at a time, focusing on one variable. I never thought about teaching long division with one number at a time and then adding a number to the dividend each time. This is a teaching strategy I will use in my future math classes.

[Tawnya Jacques]

I have learned the importance of pacing or as Math Minds calls it “Parsed” from my own experience teaching and guiding math lessons between my 1st to 2nd practicum placements. And then to further take the time to stop and reflect and allow for conversation to take place. I remember in my own education especially in elementary school, teachers dished out information and we were expected to listen and understand and regurgitate the information back. As I result I became disengaged, frustrated, and shut down.

[Danielle Calder]

I have leaned that math is starting to be taught in a way that slows the learning down. There seems to be a lot more terminology and processes to complete the work, almost like there is additional information being added onto concepts in math. In my personal experiences, math always seemed to be taught where less was required and you just knew what everything meant. Now it seems that there are many more steps and ways of doing math that takes more time but still provides you with an answer. I’m slightly conflicted in the range of pedagogy math seems to have…I was taught as a student that there was a right way to do math and a wrong way to do math and now…there are so many ways it’s hard to comprehend and keep track of them all.

[Rachelle Thomas]

I am very excited about this approach to learning/teaching mathematics! Neuroscience provides a user-friendly scaffold upon which we are able to more efficiently build our capacity to communicate vital principles and strategies therein. The concept of varying only what I want the learners to notice is very effective and simple! Furthermore, I used to think that examples were chosen in a slightly more random way, and that they had only to increase in complexity in order to properly illustrate the principle/strategy being taught. Now, I will more systematically chose the examples that I use in instruction, and so provide richer opportunities for the learners to explore the variable of focus, and it’s relationship to the concept as a whole.

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