: I will begin my internship in January and am a little bit nervous. I
: would appreciate it if those of who you have experience teaching
: math would give me what you think is valuable advice.Tons of advice available, much of which will overload you. Take a deep breath and don’t panic.Here are some good references:Read Sheila Tobias “Overcoming Math Anxiety” If you don’t create math anxiety in your elementary school kids, they won’t have to overcome it later. Or if your kids have already been demoralized by previous teachers, you can help them overcome it and develop a positive attitude towards future work.Find out about the Third International Math and Science Study, TIMSS (Should be available on the web, although I don’t have an address yet — anybody out there know?) This is a detailed, rigorous study that will tell you what various countries in the world are doing right and what some, in particular the US, are doing wrong. Use it as a basis for arguments to support making changes in your math program and approach.Read as many articles as possible in the “LD in Depth” page on this website. There are many fine articles in there, and again you can use them to justify doing something different in your classes (You will soon find that change and rocking the boat do not go over well with a lot of administrators and parents; even if their kids are failing, they are convinced that what they need is even more of what they are doing now that has failed.) Remember that good teaching is good teaching; what works well for LD kids works well for non-diagnosed or non-labelled kids too.You get good advice from just about everybody on this board here. Remember to go for a *balance*. Creative fun with numbers is nice as a break, but a steady diet of games is like a steady diet of candy, non-nutritious and tiring. You want your main lessons to be an organized, progressive curriculum with steady small reachable steps where everybody can see the steps ahead and behind and see progress being made. Go from big picture to detail to big picture again; don’t lose the forest for the trees. Math is an abstraction of the real world; go from real-world problem to abstractions with numbers back to real-world solution and common-sense checking. Don’t get caught in the abstract-only ivory tower. You need *both* facts *and* big concepts/problem-solving. Math isn’t just memorizing tables and doing speed drills; and math isn’t just abstract definitions and logic problems chasing their own tails. You need the facts to be a foundation for the theories, and you need the theories and logic to make any real use of the facts.Use pictures and diagrams and measurements constantly — math *is* physical and visual — and get your students to do them. Many students have been told that drawing is “childish” and that real math is only what comes from a book. This could hardly be farther from the truth.Use manipulatives, but with care and planning. Don’t let playing with manipulatives hide the big picture and the concept of the lesson and sequence of your development.Finger-counting has been re-introduced as “manipulative.” The trouble is, you run out of fingers. Using one hand as the counter and one as the countee, you run out at five. More sophisticated counters who touch something as the counter run out at ten. This is a problem. Unless you have advanced conceptual skills (which finger-counter’s don’t, that’s why they count), you *will* make errors in finger-counting beyond mid-Grade 1. If finger-counting is allowed (encouraged) to continue through upper elementary and even high school, as I have seen done (my niece suffered this one), you get poor number sense and slow and very inaccurate calculation, which then puts the kibosh on learning advanced arithmetic and then algebra and sets you up for a life of math failure.For beginners, if possible use an abacus (you don’t lose the beads and the rows of ten lead neatly to base-ten computationa and writing numbers 10 to 99); otherwise use small blocks or beans or pennies and dimes (also good base 10) or anything else handy. By the end of Grade 1 almost all kids should be able to deal with making dots on paper as counters.The NCTM Standards are a long way from perfect, but they are an advance over what we had previously, which was nothing at all, every teacher re-invent the wheel. Get the Standards from the library or order them from NCTM, and definitely get the detailed supplement for your grade level from NCTM. You may or may not agree with everything in it, but at least you’ll know what is generally expected and where you stand. (I personally happen to disagree with them strongly about calculators and about senior high school, but think their general organization in elementary is pretty good.)Above all, remember that memorizing formulas and recipes is not math and has nothing to do with math. If you want to develop memory skill, learn Chinese poetry, don’t call it math.Have fun.