Cover Letter
This portfolio is a summary of key topics that resonated with me during the course of my teacher preparation program. The concept that had the greatest impact to me is that teaching mathematics requires so much more than merely content knowledge. It demands the ability to create a productive learning environment for all students. To that end the big ideas I would like to focus on in this portfolio are the following; First and foremost is the establishment of a classroom environment where all students feel safe to express their ideas without critique and judgement. The two artifacts I will present for this are my notes from a NCTM session given by David Foster on creating a classroom culture through agency, identity, and authority and secondly is my list of ways that students can demonstrate their mathematically smartness. The second big idea is that a teacher's role should be one of facilitator of learning rather than an conveyor of knowledge. The artifacts I selected representing this teaching strategy are my notes from reading Smith & Stein´s 5 Practices and Driscoll´s Fostering Geometric Thinking.
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Fostering Classroom Culture
Attending the NCTM Conference was an extraordinary experience. It solidify the learning that I acquired during my coursework and Clinical Practice. Hearing from experts in the education field as well as teachers in the trenches provided an opportunity to witness outcomes of the theory and pedagogy that I have been studying. An example that resonated with me from the NCTM session was using number talks in the beginning of the year to establish a class room environment where all students voices are heard and respected. Number talks allow students to see that there are multiple ways to view a problem which opens the door to students finding their own path to solutions. As indicated by my notes from the session the speaker also provided 5 dimensions of a mathematically powerful classroom. The fourth of these is developing students authority, identity, and agency in the classroom. This establishes a classroom where students are the owners of their own learning.
As students feel safe to express their strategies and thinking they will demonstrate their mathematical smartness in a number of ways. I have generated a list of possible ways in which this can be accomplished by students. As students demonstrate their abilities, I can assign status to students who are in need of a greater standing within the classroom environment. This is done based on student´s authentic demonstration of these abilities.
TEacher Role A much needed talent of mathematics teachers is the ability to diagnose student thinking on the fly. To achieve this goal I will employ the 5 practices as defined by Smith and Stein. The 5 Practices for Orchestrating Effective Mathematics Discussions are; anticipating, monitoring, selecting, sequencing, and connecting. Depending on the course being taught, these 5 practices will be employed during a lesson designed to elicit algebraic or geometric habits of mind. The Algebraic Habits of Mind (AHOM) are; building rules to represent functions, doing-undoing, and abstracting from computation. The Geometric Habits of Mind (GHOM) are; reasoning with relationships, generalizing geometric ideas, investigating invariants, and balancing exploration with reflection.
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Statement Of LEarning
The past two semesters of my Secondary Mathematics Education course, otherwise known as Math Methods, have provided a different perspective to what I had previously thought the skills of a ¨good¨ math teacher would encompass. Prior to the mathematics education course I believed that the most critical attribute of a math teacher was their understanding of the mathematical content. As the course, and my Clinical Practice, progressed I came to understand that the talents of a successful math teacher are those that create a safe, collaborative, and inquiring environment where students can be heard engaging in mathematical discourse and collaborative problem solving. My goal as a math teacher is to create such an environment by employing the skills I have acquired over the course of the past year in the teacher credentialing program.