What I learned in math this quarter: Manipulative are to math as George Clooney is to me……True Love!

Reading back through my math blogs, I can see that I’ve learned a lot.  Number one:  manipulatives, manipulatives, manipulatives!  They make the abstract concrete.  I learned about various on-line teaching tools like Fathom, Tinkerplots and Geometry Sketch Pad.  I found them fun to play with and you can learn, use and analyze data with them.  The great part is that you can hit state standards with them too. 

I learned about new lesson plan forms.  (I am a big fan of the 5 E’s.)  I even learned about psychology (human learning) by talking about the different levels of Van Hiele’s geometric thought process.  I liked and learned about the variety of ways to make everyone accountable and by mixing up groups and assigning rotating group roles with a deck of cards.

We are here to teach children and we want to teach in a way that children can understand.  Sometimes that means that we change our language.  I’ll never forget that, “Subtraction is not taking away!”  (I hear Prof Ang. saying it.)  The other saying I remember to never use is: “go into” to describe division.   Those are two very useful things to be aware of for a 3^rd grade class! 

But I don’t think that my learning stopped there.  There were things that I learned through my assignments that really stretched my thinking and that I didn’t get the opportunity to blog about.  I looked through countless apps searching for useful educational (math) ones and worked with virtual manipulatives.  Through the videos, I learned about questioning students and have them explain why they got the answer they did.  I was analyzing how someone taught (their style), what they taught, how they taught it and had to think about ways of expanding a lesson. 

I still have questions about math teaching, some of which I will be able to answer myself through experience, some will be answered by other teachers and some I may never be able to answer.  I am an acorn just planted.  I am looking up at all the really tall trees and hope that I mature and grow……but I have to give it time!