Elementary Education Standards Two, Nine, and Fifteen

Standard 2: Elementary teachers have a broad knowledge and understanding of the major concepts in mathematics. 

As an elementary teacher, it is very important to have a firm understanding of the concepts and mathematical processes you are responsible for teaching your students.  In 21st century classrooms, it is important to teach students to solve problems in a variety of ways and from many different approaches.  This means allowing students to create their own way to solve problems and struggle with what works and what does not work.  This also means building a conceptual understanding before teaching students to use a formula. Elementary teachers must teach their students to utilize models, learn to break apart addition problems, and help them understand the process involved in solving a math problem.  Students must understand why the formula works and how to use it properly.  In order to help teachers effectively teach their students in this manner, Davidson County held school based workshops on TAP Math.  Each early release day, we met as a staff to discuss how to teach mathematics.  The symbaloo below hosts resources from these staff developments.

Davidson County TAP Math Symbaloo

Standard 9: Elementary teachers understand and use the processes of problem solving, reasoning and proof, communication, connection, and representation as the foundation for the teaching and learning of mathematics.

It is important for elementary teachers to understand problem solving, reasoning and proof, communication, connection, and representation and how to utilize them in their classrooms when teaching mathematics.  Students need to be exposed to math terms and they need to be able to use this terminology when discussing mathematics.  Students also need to be taught the process of problem solving and how to use the steps effectively.  Reasoning and proof is essential to students being able to assess and prove that their solution is correct.  Students should be able to look at an answer and decide if it is reasonable or not;  they should then be able to prove why the answer is correct.  This could involve doing the inverse operation, using a model, or drawing a picture.  Students also need to be able to connect math to real world situations.  Since math outside of school is very rarely a simple computation problem, students need to work on using their math skills in problems that mimic real life situation.  Students also need to be able to communicate about math.  Communication allows students to clear up misconceptions and to develop a firm understanding about the mathematical process with which they are dealing.  As a staff, we participated in a book study on Number Talks: Helping Children Build Mental Math and Computation Strategies, Grades K-5 by Sherry Parrish.  Number Talks discusses how to foster a classroom environment where students have conversations about math.  It helps teachers to learn how to follow students' lines of thinking and how to ask purposeful questions to guide their thinking in the right direction.  It is an excellent resource for the 21st century classroom.

More Information about Number Talks: Helping Children Build Mental Math and Computation Strategies, Grades K-5

Standard 15: Elementary teachers encourage underrepresented groups to engage in the schooling process, especially math and science.

The best way to engage any student in math and science to make the activities hands-on and engaging.  The best way to do this is through the use of performance tasks, projects that reflect the students own interest, or experiments.  As a resource teacher, I always try to enhance the learning that my students are focusing on in the classroom.  I like to design tasks that are meaningful and exciting to my students.  Below I have attached a math performance task, a reflection on how the performance task was designed, and my students' response to the task.  I made science relative and exciting to my students by using National Geographic Pathfinder. We read the November-December issue on Pandas and then discussed endangered species and their significance to their ecosystems.  Students then used the WWF iPad app to do research on an endangered species and then designed a poster with information about their animal and why people should help save them.