Week 9: Effective Mathematics in the classroom

(“The Effective Mathematics Classroom”, 2019)

In my math’s classroom, I would like to focus on ten points in order to maximize the students full potential. These ten points all relate to effectively learning mathematics in the classroom and provide a guide for how teachers can effectively teach mathematics to their students. These include

1. Establishing mathematics goals for the classroom
2. Using and connecting mathematical representation to real life events
3. Implementing tasks that promote reasoning and problem solving
4. Supporting productive and constructive struggle in learning mathematics
5. Encouraging students to work cooperatively with others
6. Structuring activities in ways allowing students to explore, explain, extend and evaluate their progress
7. Influencing learning by posing challenging and interesting questions related to the tasks
8. Projecting a positive learning attitude about mathematics in and out of the classroom, in order to give the student confidence when doing the mathematics
9. Focusing on lessons that are specific concepts/skills influenced by the curriculum
10. Use Cooperative-learning strategies in order to help with communication skills and to help make real-life connections.

These ideas or focus points relate to the constructivist theory due to the fact that they allow students to independently construct their own understanding and knowledge of the mathematics used in the world around them; it also allows them to self-direct their own learning in order to come up with different strategies that will allow them to problem solve independently. These points also relate back to Vygotskys Zone of proximal development theory and scaffolding strategy. This is because of the way the teacher demonstrates and guides the students prior knowledge and helps them develop new skills in order to work on them and complete activities independently. (“Asking Effective questions”, 2019)