Today’s class once again began with a discussion concerning our observation days. Each week I learn something new and more and more I appreciate hearing the stories from my fellow classmates.
The first thing we dived into this week was a discussion about conceptual and procedural knowledge. We talked about how conceptual knowledge consists of rich relationships or webs of ideas and how procedural knowledge is knowledge of the rules and the procedures used to carry out routine mathematical tasks and of the symbolism used to represent mathematics. I believe my own experience of mathematics dealt primarily with procedural knowledge. I remember all too well memorizing how to do the step-by-step procedures of certain equations but not quite understanding what they meant. It’s good that we take both into consideration today when we teach children. However, I also worry that I will end up like my own teachers and fall into the method I had grown up knowing; hopefully that will not be the case since we are learning the proper concepts in this course.
We were also introduced to the text Thinking Mathematically by John Mason, Leone Burton and Kaye Stacey. This book lists four processes that students use to help them think critically about mathematics, they are: specialize, generalize, conjecture, and convincing and justifying. I think this would be a great book to read and hopefully I’ll have the opportunity in the future to do so. I believe it would be a great asset to the classroom.
There was also a discussion about the three phrases one goes through to do a math problem: entry, attack, and review. I felt like this was a perfect way to look at a problem, its helps children be organized and puts the problem into perspective when they are working on it! Children are able to start off thinking about what they know about the problem, then how they would plan to go about solving it and then having the chance to think about what they just did. I really enjoyed looking at math problems this way and see myself using this in my own future class one day.
Overall, today’s class was excellent, very informative, giving plenty of ideas and sources that can be used one day in our own classes.
The first thing we dived into this week was a discussion about conceptual and procedural knowledge. We talked about how conceptual knowledge consists of rich relationships or webs of ideas and how procedural knowledge is knowledge of the rules and the procedures used to carry out routine mathematical tasks and of the symbolism used to represent mathematics. I believe my own experience of mathematics dealt primarily with procedural knowledge. I remember all too well memorizing how to do the step-by-step procedures of certain equations but not quite understanding what they meant. It’s good that we take both into consideration today when we teach children. However, I also worry that I will end up like my own teachers and fall into the method I had grown up knowing; hopefully that will not be the case since we are learning the proper concepts in this course.
We were also introduced to the text Thinking Mathematically by John Mason, Leone Burton and Kaye Stacey. This book lists four processes that students use to help them think critically about mathematics, they are: specialize, generalize, conjecture, and convincing and justifying. I think this would be a great book to read and hopefully I’ll have the opportunity in the future to do so. I believe it would be a great asset to the classroom.
There was also a discussion about the three phrases one goes through to do a math problem: entry, attack, and review. I felt like this was a perfect way to look at a problem, its helps children be organized and puts the problem into perspective when they are working on it! Children are able to start off thinking about what they know about the problem, then how they would plan to go about solving it and then having the chance to think about what they just did. I really enjoyed looking at math problems this way and see myself using this in my own future class one day.
Overall, today’s class was excellent, very informative, giving plenty of ideas and sources that can be used one day in our own classes.
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