NCTM Process Standards

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has a list of five process standards Problem Solving, Reasoning and Proof, Communication, Connections, and Representation (NCTM, 2012). Each of these standards gives students the tools he or she needs to excel at math. Within each of these standards are guidelines to understanding mathematics and utilizing this understanding in real-world applications. Math does not have to be difficult or ridged to learn. Math is precise but there is more than one route the individual can take to arrive at the correct destination.

Word problems

Most of the time I spent in math class was dedicated to two things. First was learning a new skill and practice practice practice. Second was reading a word problem and deducing the correct skill I needed to solve the problem. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics refers to this as the problem-solving standard (NCTM, 2012). Becoming proficient in determining how to solve a word problem is helpful because as an adult most every time I need to use math it is presented as a word problem.  Referring to word problems as life problems may be more accurate.

             Jon Scieszka wrote a children’s book called Math Curse. In this book the main character is bombarded with math questions throughout the day (Scieszka , 1995). The questions are things such as how much time does it take to get ready in the morning? I believe children need to understand that math is something that they will use for the rest of their lives to figure out a number of problems.

Fractions rock!

I do not know how to explain it but fractions always has been my favorite subject in math. The concept of pieces of a whole just makes sense. It may be the way I was introduced to fractions or it may be the way my brain works. I am not sure which. I remember working with manipulatives when learning about fractions so this may have helped me understand fractions better.  Reducing, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of fractions were equally easy for me.  Once I started seeing fractions in algebra the operations were trickier but, I understood the concept of fractions and how they relate to whole numbers with ease. I believe it is due to the solid background I had in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division that enabled me to grasp the concept.

Algebra -sigh

I was enrolled in algebra in high school. Mostly I understood the commutative property and the Pythagorean Theorem as well as others, but it was because I memorized the definitions. In my sophomore year of high school my algebra teacher was woefully under qualified to teach the class. On more than one occasion she would leave the room to go next door to ask another teacher what she missed when teaching the class the lesson. Eventually I dropped this class and took a geometry class instead. As soon as I could drop math classes, I did so and never looked back, until I enrolled in college.

Math education in the 80’s from the student’s perspective

When I was in school so many years ago math was a sore subject. The lessons were boring with a capital B. Most lessons consisted of a teacher showing an example of the procedure and a long list of problems to solve. Long division was most dreaded because one problem could take the entire page to solve.  Beware if a step was miscalculated. One small misstep in calculation would throw off the entire answer and the division problem could go on indefinitely.