Response to Reading Week 1

1. It gives the students the opportunity to use what they already know and how they learn well to solve the problem themselves. It also teaches them strategies (that they developed themselves) to use in the future.

2. I feel that my experiences with Math will make me a stronger and more effective teacher for my students. I can take the good and the bad experiences I had to facilitate an environment that will either encourage my students to have similar experiences or prevent them from having hard ones.

3. Time spent letting the kids discover and explore their knowledge will lead to more retention and require less repeated instruction in the future. While it is important to teach certain concepts explicitly, students will more likely retain basic facts and operations if learned in way that is meaningful to them (not being talked at). If we give our students the tools and strategies to continue to grow as a learner we are setting them up to be successful students and people.

4. It is not a good idea to ever tell a student something is, "easy." We also do not want to be too quick to jump in and give them too much information that prevents them from solving the problem on their own. A better way is ask them questions that will lead to their own discovery of the answer. These questions may help them organize their thoughts and give them the push they needed to solve the problem.

5. The article tasks focused on activating the students prior knowledge and utilizing their strengths (what they did know) to solve the word problems. The tasks also forced the students to make sense of the problems before solving them. In the marbles problem, the teacher guided the student through the problem (without providing hints and prompts) by asking him questions that responded in answers that allowed him to make sense of what the problem was asking him. He did the work with strategies and ideas he already knew and were comfortable with.