Chapter 1 - Reflection

Teaching Mathematics to me is about developing thinkers and problem solvers, a task that will be ever daunting to me since I became a preschool teacher in this field.  I remembered myself as being so afraid and so poor in Math during my school days and now to be a responsible person to be teaching the young the subject.  “Hey May, are you in the right mind?” a question I often ask myself.  Nevertheless since I set my foot on it, I have to continue walking the path to learn how I can do it, how I should do it, and very importantly understand why I should do it.

While reading through the first chapter of the text, what I internalized most is the 6 principles, which gave me good insights into what I should be considering while planning a Math programme for children.  I felt well informed with the guide that looks into each aspect of support of learning and teaching simply by understanding the followings:

·      that all children should be given the opportunity to learn mathematics.

·      provisioning a coherent curriculum that builds around “big ideas” (pp. 2 & 7).

·  building teachers’ capacity to understand the mathematical content. before teaching the mathematical concepts to children; to ensure that teachers understand how children learn so as to be able to plan meaningful instructions for learning.

·     the importance of the learning process where children are able to assimilate instructions and learn with understanding to think and reason mathematically.

·      observing various techniques for assessing children’s learning.

·      finally, acknowledging the effect of using technology as a support for learning mathematics.

As being a curriculum planner, I literally would focus on the curriculum focal points.  The emphasis in this text is the importance of a coherent curriculum, which directs me to think of the current adoption of the math teaching approach from Growing with Mathematics (McGraw-Hill Educational Product).  

It had been two years since we have taught Math with its resources and followed as closely as possible to the approach but I do not feel there was much of a impact it had done for our children.  As I reflected now, it could be perhaps our teachers are not mathematicians and do not see themselves as one and therefore, our children does not turned out to be mathematically inclined.

Nevertheless, I would hope to be able to encourage our teachers after going through this module, to give them and myself the confidence to deliver meaningful math lesson just by being able to demonstrate persistence when conducting mathematical investigations; display positive attitude toward the subject; most importantly to be able to reflect on their own practices as suggested on page 10 from the text.