At the start of this course, I didn't know what to expect or what I would be learning - all I really knew was the course was about math curriculum and pedagogy. Although I didn't expect I'd be doing art in a math class, it really changed my perspective of math and how there are so many ways we can teach math and integrate cross-curricular content!
Throughout this course, I think the biggest thing I learned and took away was the idea of being more aware of how we as (future) teachers teach math to our students. There were a few readings in particular that really stood out to me such as the Skemp article and the Lockhart's Lament article. With Skemp's article, it made me more conscious of how and what we decide to teach students and has made me put a lot more thought into my lesson planning. As for Lockhart's Lament, it was a very engaging and enjoyable article to read and I really resonated with the ideas he put forth about having students try to come up with their solutions rather than the teacher give a demonstration and explanation beforehand and having students do problems afterwards - quite similar to a Thinking Classroom approach, I think. These articles have given me ideas and helped shape how I plan to teach my lessons in the future.
Furthermore, I really enjoyed the math puzzles (I will definitely be keeping those for future math puzzles to give to my own students!) and I really am glad I had the chance to participate in the BCAMT math conference on Pro-D because it was a great place to get resources and a wonderful sharing space for teachers.
Overall, I gained some new insights in regards to teaching math from this course. Thank you and happy holidays!
