Math
Creative problem-solving, purposeful questions, and student discourse are at the heart of my math teaching practice. I guide students through productive struggle, encouraging inquiry and exploration and ensuring that they have enough support to discover solutions on their own. Manipulatives, mathematical representations, and technology tools provide differentiation and make complex concepts approachable. My classroom will celebrate mistakes as learning opportunities and honor a variety of strategies and ways to demonstrate understanding, including those invented by students. I will encourage students to use precise mathematical language (“vertex” in the photo below) to communicate their thinking by asking questions, explaining their reasoning, and attempting to re-articulate thoughts shared by their peers. Math is engaging when it is made relatable and relevant through authentic applications. I nurture a positive math mindset by modeling perseverance and showing how math is fun and useful. We can all be mathematicians!
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Fifth Grade Lesson Plan: Area & Perimeter
This lesson, adapted from the Investigations curriculum, is about finding area and perimeter of arrays, and about noticing patterns and discovering rules as the number of rows in the array increases. Kindergarten Number Talk Lesson Procedure This is the procedure I created to implement a Number Talk with small groups of kindergarteners. |
Experience
In my kindergarten internship, I used the Everyday Math curriculum to teach math concepts including numbers 1-20, graphing, patterns, shapes, sorting, and word problems. Through the workshop model, I provided differentiated instruction to small groups of students. I taught math every day of my fifth grade internship, using the Investigations curriculum which included multiplication, division, graphing, decimals, fractions, and area and perimeter patterns. Mini-lessons were delivered to the whole class before students worked independently or in pairs as I conferred with them. |