Audio Transcript Auto-generated
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Hello.
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My name is Anthony and this is my
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reflection for the primary junior mathematics course.
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As you can see,
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I pictured my reflection as an iceberg where the surface represents
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my initial thoughts and opinions about mathematics before taking the course
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while the topics underwater represent what I've learned in this
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course and how it changed my perceptions about the subject.
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Mhm.
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Before taking this math course,
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the first thing that came to my mind when thinking about the subject
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was numbers and all the different formulas I've learned through my experiences.
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Unlike language or literacy,
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math always has definitive answers and procedures
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are often used to find them.
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This was especially true in high school where strands like calculus in
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vectors would have long and complex formulas for finding the answers.
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A trend. I noticed when taking higher levels of math is that it's heavily procedural
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and we were often taught a single method to solving a problem,
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which led me to thinking that math relies a lot on rote learning and memorization.
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The next slides,
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we'll cover how my views on math have changed after taking this course.
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One thing I've learned from this course is how effective
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math teaching starts with making learning accessible to students,
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which can be accomplished through relating concepts to
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their cultures and applying them into real life scenarios
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to accommodate for the learning needs of all students.
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Math should be taught using multiple resources such as through videos,
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manipulative
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games
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websites
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and more as opposed to learning it solely through textbooks and worksheets.
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While those are important for assessments and covering curriculum content,
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it may not support the diverse set of learning needs in the classroom
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as there will always be a handful of
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students with an exceptionality language barrier and more
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as teachers,
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we want to shift away from past narratives where we are perceived as all knowing.
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Instead we should act as facilitators who guides
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students with learning math in a meaningful way
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that's inquiry based
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after applying the three part problem solving approach on the co teaching days.
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So mine's on action and consolidate.
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I learned that it can be an effective way to assess students for
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their prior knowledge in order to plan lessons based on their learning needs.
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Doing that
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while also having high expectations for
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students to succeed in math are fundamental
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values I wish to take into my future practices as a teacher.
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There are also many common misconceptions that promote methods and ideas
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which are things I wish to address in order
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to make students more comfortable with approaching the subject.
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An example could be how math problems can only be solved in one way,
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which I will further talk about later on.
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An important idea I learned in this course is to value the process over the product.
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While every student is aiming to find the same answer in a problem,
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all the mathematical thinking comes from the methods
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they use and how they got the answer.
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What stuck out to me was how flexible one can be in math, seeing as
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there are multiple ways to go about solving the problem which
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all begins with understanding the patterns that go into the subject
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as future teachers. It's important we use
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review concepts like additive and multiplication thinking
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as a set of patterns rather than just
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simply adding and multiplying procedurally so that we
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can support students in developing flexibility with numbers
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upon reflecting on my past experiences on math. I thought to myself,
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I memorized the formula, but how and why does it work this way?
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While I had a solid grasp on how to do the procedures,
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I lacked the conceptual understanding on the concepts which resulted in me
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simply plugging and chugging numbers together
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without understanding what I was doing
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as a teacher.
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I want my students to demonstrate their mathematical thinking through their
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understanding of the concepts so that they'll be able to apply
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this knowledge in their daily lives rather than mindlessly writing down
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the formulas that will likely be forgotten in the future.
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I've learned that it's ideal to first
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build students conceptual understanding and then eventually
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moving on to learning about the shortcuts
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of the concepts through procedural understanding.
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That's all for my reflection.
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Thank you for listening