EDU 293, Math Methods and Curriculum Development is a course that was very impactful on my teaching abilities.

Through the class, I learned numerous strategies for teaching mathematics in the classroom, and became significantly more confident about my ability to do so. Prior to taking this course, I had never thought myself a strong mathematician, and I was very hesitant to teach the subject, compared to other subject areas. Throughout the course of the class I developed many effective learning strategies to implement with students. Two of the key components of this course were lessons that I taught in a live classroom. At the time I was interning in a 4th grade general education classroom. I developed these two lessons as part of the class fraction unit. The lessons were introduced 2 weeks apart, and both served to develop the concept of equivalency among fractions. The goal of the first lesson, Domination, was for students to be able to break fractions down into sums of fractions with the same denominator (e.g.1/5+1/5= 2/5; 1/3+1/3+1/3= 1). This was an activity that was completed in partners after I had modeled the activity using the document camera and the manipulatives. In developing the lesson, I planned through each of the components of an effective lesson, as determined by Madeline Hunter. As the students worked through the activity, a situation which I had not anticipated came along. The sheet I gave the students to use had a limited number of each piece on it. For example, there were two circles divided into sixths. Once a student had shaded all in, if they drew another domino representing any amount of sixths, they had no pieces to fill in. In response to this, I chose to address groups individually when they got to this point. I did not stop to redirect the whole class, because some student pairs were working at a slower pace than others, and did not get to this point during the time allotted for our lesson. Essentially, this helped me to differentiate for the group of students. I assisted the lower level students with the basic task, and modeled for the advanced students how to locate equivalent pieces on their sheets. Reflecting on the lesson, I felt that it was effective for students at various levels of understanding, and students seemed engaged in their learning task. I feel that having a hands-on game to help practice with fractional concepts was much more productive than a worksheet, or board work would have been. The second lesson I taught this group was on equivalent fractions. Two weeks after our previous lesson, students were at a point where they could understand that two fractions can be the same size, even though the number (denominator) and size of the parts (numerator) are different. I again modeled the steps of the activity for the students using the document camera and a student volunteer. In this lesson, I provided the students with fraction pieces cut to their representational size, but adding up to the same length when all put together (ex: (4) fourth pieces are the same length as (7) sevenths pieces). I again had students work in pairs, and gave several different fractions to work with. I asked the students to find as many other fractions to represent the one I had given as they could (ex: 2/4 = 1/2 = 4/8, etc.). In this lesson, I again found that some students found the task to be very easy, while others struggled with it. From both of these lessons I came to understand the importance of having challenge tasks for students showing mastery of concepts, and the necessity of teacher monitoring and assistance/questioning to aide struggling students. Through the experience, I gained an appreciation for the art of teaching math. I came to enjoy the clarity of answers (when teaching writing, for example, there may be many different answers). I developed an enjoyment for teaching a subject that I had never

been the most excited to learn about as a student, and have since enjoyed exciting my students about this subject.