Standard 4: Content Knowledge

The teacher understands the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structure of the discipline

I believe that all content taught in the classroom should have meaningful connectivity to the “real world.” I have experienced many classes during my collegiate career and have found no value in the content unless I have had direct application. My elementary and secondary school math lessons lacked meaning. My first statistics class at the University of Utah was the beginning of real world math application. I spent most of my life under the age of 18 thinking that math was useless. I am grateful that I was able to take four statistics classes. Considering my major and minor were in social sciences, accurate knowledge of the mathematical content helped support my opinion and research papers. Additionally, I was able to understand the statistical outcomes of certain social science concepts, which helped me better understand the “why” of the social world. In the future I will continue to connect real world math problems to the personal schemas of my students. I will do so because I have personally felt the real world context that has made math engaging.

The math lessons I taught during my student teaching were aligned to specific 3rd grade state core standards. The standards are written in a fairly dry format. However, my math lessons needed to be engaging for my students. After much deliberation, I made a pizza math activity that the students enjoyed. I pre-assessed my students by asking them if they knew the connection between subtraction and division. I also asked the students if they liked pizza. The answers I received helped my students apply their knowledge of subtraction to their love of pizza. The tangible manipulatives helped move the concrete concept of subtraction to the new idea of fractions.