Lauren Martin

TEAC 403B

Josh Males

April 9, 2017

Capstone Paper

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to

think critically. Intelligence plus character that is the goal of true

education. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This was a quote I found during my

first year as an education major. I believe that it outlines exactly the kind of

teacher I want to be and continue to grow into. I want to be able to teach my

students to think critically and problem solve. That is my true goal and I

believe that I am well on my way of becoming that person for my students.

Philosophy Statement

Math has never been a good friend to many students. But to me math

has been one of my best friends. So, when I was deciding what I wanted to

go to school for, I figured I should be helping the future generations of

America. I decided I wanted to help kids succeed in their life goals through

teaching and then went on to choose a subject that I had a passion for. A

subject that I believe I can make everyone come to like, if not, at least

bearable. I also chose mathematics because I believe it is an important

subject for the future as well for developing skills that will last a lifetime.

I believe in a student-centered classroom where the students are

building off of previous knowledge and discovering the concepts and ideas
for themselves within groups. I think that learning mathematics should be

very collaborative activity. I have found in my experiences that the students

can sometimes explain these ideas and concepts to their peers better than I

can. I want to be able to lay the ground work and create hands on activities

and rich tasks that support this kind of learning for my students because I

have found it to be most beneficial and allows material to better stick with

the students.

I am very open to new ways of teaching and student learning. One idea

that I was toying with when I first began my journey to becoming an

educator was a flipped classroom. I am still very interested in this idea of

creating a classroom where we can use our time to explore applications of

mathematical material. But I have also become very fond of creating tasks

for my students to discover the material in the classroom. Maybe one day I

can find a way to blend these ideas into my classroom setting.

I also believe in a management style that is consistent and creates a

warm classroom community. I visualize an equal and respectful classroom

where the students can be responsible for their own learning and not disrupt

the learning of others. I am a strong believer in welcoming the students back

the next day with a clean slate once a conversation has occurred between

teacher and student about the expectations and what can be done to ensure

that the needs of the student are being met. To guarantee that all of these

ideas can be accomplished I plan to set a consistent routine for my students

as well as posting a set of rules for the classroom. Even though some rules
can go unspoken, I think it is more beneficial to lay them out for everyone to

see and refer to.

In conclusion, I think that I am a very open, yet routine based educator

that is invested in the bigger picture for my students. And although students

may not think they will ever use math again in their lives, math will teach

them critical thinking skills that they will be using in the future and I consider

this one of the most important aspects a student can learn in their

middle/high school career. And I am glad to be the one who teaches them

these skills and hopefully make math one of their best friends.

Instructional Practices

Two areas from the Mathematics Teaching Practices that I feel I have

facilitated the most development in are Establishing Mathematical Goals to

Focus Learning and Implementing Tasks that Promote Reasoning and Problem

Solving. I will outline my experience and growth in these two areas of the

Instructional Practices from NCTMs Principles to Actions: Ensuring

Mathematical Success For All.

In our methods course, we wrote out a unit plan with a group as one of

our assignments. I believe this assignment really helped us to learn how to

create mathematical goals to focus the learning of our students. Within this

unit plan we were able to piece apart all of the sections of the curriculum and

tie each piece to the mathematical goals of our students. Within the

assignment we wrote out mathematical goals, described how the lesson

impacted the unit as a whole and wrote detailed descriptions of how we

NCTM says that, Effective mathematics teaching begins with a shared

understanding among teachers of the mathematics that students are

learning and how this mathematics develops along learning progressions.

This shared understanding includes clarifying the broader mathematical

goals that guide planning on a unit-by-unit basis, as well as the more

targeted mathematics goals that guide instruction decisions on a lesson-by-

lesson basis (Leinwand, 12). I fully believe this was the point of this project

that we completed in our methods courses. This experience is what began

my growth in this Instructional Practice.

In my student teaching I have also had wonderful opportunities in the

area of establishing mathematical goals. It has helped me to see and learn

the workings of a good, reflective system for both my students and myself.

At the beginning of the unit my students are presented with a goal/objective

chart. We review the goals for the chapter and as we move through the

chapter the students are able to reflect on where they are at with each

mathematical goal. They reflect after the material is presented and

practiced. Next, they reflect after taking a short assessment over a few of

the objectives chunked together. This allows me as a teacher to see where

my students are with the mathematical goals and be able to readjust to get

my students where they need to be. Lastly they get to reflect on the

mathematical goals after the unit test and later on after a cumulative

assessment. The students then get to describe what may have gone wrong,
what they need to work on and what went well. When teachers refer to the

goals during instruction, students become more focused and better able to

perform self-assessment and monitor their own learning (Leinwand, 13). The

system that I have been taught and am working through to incorporate into

my future classroom has really allowed me to better understand this practice

and better my use of this idea in the classroom.

Implementing Tasks that Promote Reasoning and Problem Solving was

difficult for me at first. It was hard for me to use my CTs tasks and be able to

think through what the students were thinking. But I eventually started

coming around and was able to see why these tasks were so meaningful to

the students. For example, one task that we did was the Power of Math. This

is a task that my cooperating teacher created for the idea of exponents. This

was a task that my students used before learning anything about exponents.

The students were given the worksheet and told to work through the

problems with their groups. This task hit every piece of knowledge that

students needed to know about exponents and how they can be used in real

life. Because we used this task first, we were able to relate back to it

whenever there were intriguing questions that came up later on in the

chapter. Especially when we came to the concept of a zero exponent,

negative exponents and even how the graphs of exponents could never go

negative. It was very interesting to see this happen for my students. What is

critical is that a task provide students with the opportunity to engage

actively in reasoning, sense making, and problem solving so that they

Power of Math task my students were able to reason and problem solve with

their peers to develop the deeper understanding of the mathematics before

they even learned anything about exponents. This in turn made the chapter

more understandable and meaningful for the students.

I later on used Polynomial Man, which was very rich task for my

students. They did a lot of positive struggling together in their groups as they

worked through this activity. All the students had in their toolbox for this was

the beginning stages of adding/subtracting and multiplying polynomials. The

only directions we gave them were to find the area and perimeter of each

man using the given measurements. We told them that they may need to

reason out some of the other measurements, but they had everything they

needed to figure out the solutions. These tasks encourage reasoning and

access to the mathematics through multiple entry points, including the use

of different representations and tools, and they foster the solving of

problems through varied solution strategies (Leinwand, 17). From this we

can see that these tasks should encourage varied solutions and multiple

entry points, which I believe we saw within this task. The next day, it was

very interesting to hear the different methods of finding measurements and

the combination of ways to put like terms together for the area and

perimeter.

Proudest Curriculum Design Accomplishment

my factoring with algebra tiles lesson. It was a hit, especially fun for the kids

because they were able to be hands on and play with the different pieces

and physically build polynomials. The students were able to physically see

the multiplication of two binomials and the factoring of simple trinomials.

For the first period I taught this lesson, I found the need for there to be

many changes made before the next period began. Thank goodness I had a

couple of class periods to figure it out! I am not saying that it was a horrible

execution the first time, but there were a few kinks that needed to be

straitened out. The biggest kink was displaying student work and how they

built their rectangles compared to mine. When I built my rectangles, I noticed

I was building them in the most basic of ways. My students were building

their rectangles in forms that I never thought about. It was amazing. But as I

was drawing examples of rectangles on the board I was only showing my

interpretation and not pulling from the students interpretations.

For the next class period, my CT and I came up with the plan to use my

phone and display it through the airplay. So during building time, I walked

around and took pictures of the students examples and was able to display

them on the board. I loved this idea and the kids loved it too! All of them

wanted me to take pictures of their creations, but we had to take turns.

Everyone was a lot more engaged during this period. The tiles engaged them

in the previous period, but not like this. I had more meaningful discussion
than I did before. I wish I had saved the pictures of the students creations. It

was fascinating.

Concluding Remarks

I believe the epilogue of NCTMs Success from the Start said it best

with their brief words of encouragement to teachers who are just beginning

their journey. They start off talking about a vision, the very same vision I had

when I first decided I wanted to become an educator. They then go on to talk

about how we have learned this vision to not always be the case and

reminded us to continue reflecting on our mistakes and use professional

development to our advantage. They also remind us of the fact that we are

life long learners with this excerpt, As kids, we thought adults knew it all.

Now as adults, we know better. But knowing it all seems less attractive than

it once did. Continuing to learn is more fun-and more interesting. No matter

where you are, you can always figure out ways to get better (Wieman, 199).

And with that I will forever continue to grow into the teacher that I want to

be, and will not stop striving to be the best that I can be for my students.
 References

Leinwand, Steve. Principles to actions: ensuring mathematical success for all.

Reston, Virg.: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2014. Print.

Wieman, Rob, and Fran Arbaugh. Success from the start: your first years

teaching secondary mathematics. Reston, Va, U.S.A.: NCTM, 2013. Print.