Class Summary

I have to be completely honest and say that what I learned in this course is more that I learned during Teacher's College. We looked at resources, practices, pedagogy, teaching strategies, assessment methods and more which were all geared towards the math curriculum, but most certainly does not limit us to the math curriculum. There is nothing we won't be able to use in our careers as teachers that we didn't learn in this course. I have never bookmarked so many pages in my Chrome browser as I have over the last 2 months. Everything we covered is transferable throughout the subjects and I am so grateful for that. I am excited to use the information I learned in this course in my science teachables and I am looking forward to the next course I take!

Millennials

I saw this awhile back and thought it was quite relevant to this course and teaching. Millennials do get a bad rep and whether that is fair or not is up for debate. Simon brings up a lot of interesting points about this generation and why they act like they do. I have to admit that even though I am not technically considered a millennial I can be guilty of some of the things he talks about on occasion. As teachers it is important to understand our students, and since we will be teaching this generation we may as well educate ourselves more! Let me know what you guys think.

Mental Math

I work part time in retail during the year and I'm always finding new ways to calculate math in my head. It's a shame that students have resorted to using calculators all the time rather than challenging themselves to do simple math in their heads. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I certainly do believe that simple mental math needs to be a requirement in our schools. It's not very often that people in everyday jobs need to bust out their scientific calculator to do a calculation. The basic mathematical operations are really all we need to know for most jobs. If mental math becomes part of the curriculum again I know students will be far better off in their first jobs.