Mr. McConnell

Math Philosophy

My philosophy for teaching math is as simple as knowing that everybody can do math, and can become good in math. That is the base of my philosophy, and from there I will build upon how I will stay true to this. Nowadays, there are too many students and even adults who have this thought that they can’t do math. My goal is to have everyone of my students not only start to believe that they can do math, but to prove it to them by exposing them to many different ways to teach a concept of math. Meaning that I want to be able to provide the students with multiple avenues that they can explore to learn a concept such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, of division. Back when I went through school, I remember math being taught to me one way, being the factual side. Meaning that we weren’t taught why we were doing the math, just that it got us to the end result. But what I have come to understand is that factual is important for learning math, but there are also two other areas that need to be covered to best benefit the student. Being Conceptual understanding, and also the procedural understanding.

Conceptual understanding is very important as students advance through math. Learning new concepts depends on what you already know, as they progress through math these new concepts will depend on old conceptual knowledge. So for me I believe this is the most import piece of the three. Although I, find this the most important, I do plan to still put a focus on the factual and procedural as all three are needed to teach effectively to my students. The coolest teaching tactic I learned from this class and is something that really helps focus on the conceptual understanding. The activity was a number talk, or a dot talk. This is great as you allow students to show the way they got the answer, or how they see the dots. This is great as the students get to show the many different ways they got to the end. I also want to make sure that I fit time where they get to work with objects to help them understand both the concept and really helps with the procedural understanding. As it allows them to work with object instead of just pen and paper.