Philosophy of Teaching
To many others, the word educator has a different meaning to others as they hold an important role in student’s lives. I believe that the meaning of an educator is someone who is caring, listens, teaches, and make an impact on students. A teacher holds an important role in young minds by allowing students to use their problem-solving skills to become adaptive thinkers. Many students are fearful and believe that math is hard or they are just not good at it. As a teacher, it is my job to make learning math interactive, engaging, and limit as much fear in students as possible. By having a positive outlook in math as well as an overall positive learning environment, students are more likely to be excited to learn math. My hope as an educator is to get students excited about learning and have my students leave my classroom with an understanding of new concepts gained.
To start a unit in math, I would use direct instruction to assess prior knowledge of the topic to gain an understanding of students’ level of knowledge. I would introduce new vocabulary words at the beginning of the unit to allow students to gain a familiarity with the terms that will be used. Using direct instruction, I am able to model the math skill that will be focused on during the unit. Once students have an understanding of the topic I would create inquiry lessons to allow students to discover and expand their knowledge. This would include using real world problems and manipulatives to represent their learning in a different way. Students would then work in cooperative learning groups where each group is focused on a certain part of the unit and teaches the rest of the class as a review of what has been learned.
Another teaching strategy I would implement in my mathematics unit is stations. This allows students the chance to work on concepts previously learned, in the process of learning, and small group teaching to students who may be struggling. By doing this, students gain hands-on learning from activities that can be differentiate to students’ ability.
All of these methods combined in a unit of mathematics allows myself to provide scaffolding guidance to the students. Also, I am able to support my students and dispense responsibility of learning onto my students. As a future educator, my main goal is to encourage and enable students to develop necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to be successful in mathematics.
To start a unit in math, I would use direct instruction to assess prior knowledge of the topic to gain an understanding of students’ level of knowledge. I would introduce new vocabulary words at the beginning of the unit to allow students to gain a familiarity with the terms that will be used. Using direct instruction, I am able to model the math skill that will be focused on during the unit. Once students have an understanding of the topic I would create inquiry lessons to allow students to discover and expand their knowledge. This would include using real world problems and manipulatives to represent their learning in a different way. Students would then work in cooperative learning groups where each group is focused on a certain part of the unit and teaches the rest of the class as a review of what has been learned.
Another teaching strategy I would implement in my mathematics unit is stations. This allows students the chance to work on concepts previously learned, in the process of learning, and small group teaching to students who may be struggling. By doing this, students gain hands-on learning from activities that can be differentiate to students’ ability.
All of these methods combined in a unit of mathematics allows myself to provide scaffolding guidance to the students. Also, I am able to support my students and dispense responsibility of learning onto my students. As a future educator, my main goal is to encourage and enable students to develop necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to be successful in mathematics.