Aly Monson Math Methods

     Through this year-long curriculum, I learned how important it is for teachers to plan ahead. There are so many standards that need to be covered throughout the year and the standards all vary in the length of time it will take to teach and for the students to master. Teachers need to plan for this and read through all the standards at the beginning of the year to make sure they have time to get to everything. I have been in math classes before (more in middle school) that seem to be so rushed at the end of the year which could have been due to the teacher’s lack of a year-long curriculum plan. Obviously, other things could have come up or lessons took longer than my teacher thought, but it still reminds me of the importance of having a plan because I know how stressed I was when I had to learn concepts too quickly and didn't have time to master them before the tests. I also learned how important it is to review standards from the previous grade because they tie in so...

  Based on the seven pieces of student work on the gumball problem, I learned that this problem shouldn't be assessed or graded as just right or wrong. To properly assess student learning or student knowledge using this problem, teachers need to understand the student’s thinking. If they got the right answer, teachers need to determine if the student actually understood what the problem was asking and how to use probability to get that answer, or if they just guessed. That is important in this problem specifically, because the problem basically asked the student to give an answer that was an integer between 1 and 10 and the correct answers were 4-6 so if a student guessed, they still had a 30% chance of getting it right even without understanding the problem or the concept of probability. If the student got the wrong answer, it is also important to understand the student’s thinking. Some of the students got the wrong answer because they really didn't understand probability. Som...