Allie Shoaf

Chapter 1
Connections:
When the book talks about children using connections to work through
mathematical problems, I can recall students in my practicum classrooms
being more interested and grasping problems involving their classmates
names and things they know about rather than problems about random
things and people.
The eight Common Core strategies are very similar to the VA SOLs that I
have experienced through my schooling and in my practicum.
The sociocultural theory seems to represent children all over the learning
spectrum and seems to be more applicable to what I have experienced in my
in classroom time.
Challenges:
Helping to meet and overcome the disequilibrium through accommodation
Changing your classroom from instrumental understanding to just
understanding, to help broaden and encourage the use of mathematics.
Developing learning goals that are geared towards childrens understanding
rather than the SOLs or other standards
Planning for children to fail and that being okay.
Concepts:
The Five Strands
o Conceptual understandings
o Procedural fluency
o Strategic competence
o Adaptive reasoning
o Productive disposition
Constructivism
Sociocultural theory
Learner-centered classrooms
Types of teaching:
o Direct instruction
o Facilitative methods
o Coaching
Changes:
From the reading I saw a very brief glimpse of how differently each child will
solve each and every problem and I need to adapt my lessons to fit each one
of those ways and help each child succeed.
Everyone should be teaching for understanding rather than teaching toward
instrumental understanding.
Preparing and encouraging children to make mistakes, this is how they learn.

As a teacher we need to encourage our childrens ideas and experiences and

adapt our lessons to help them learn the way they understand.
Allie Shoaf
Chapter 8
Connections:
In second grade classroom experience, many kids could subitize but some
children struggled greatly with this concept and had to continually count
each individual item.
The differences in children grasping the concept of more, less, and same, in
my practicum this concept came easily to 1/3 of my students but the rest of
the first graders struggled unless given an explicit example.
In my practicum classroom, we would count by 5s and 10s every day during
math.
In my practicum classroom, much of their counting is done in the part-partwhole way, mainly with connecting cubes.
Numbers were everywhere in my practicum classrooms, exposing the
children to numbers helps increase their knowledge.
Challenges:
Early numerical knowledge is almost adapted, it cannot be forced, and so
each child will learn and grasp these concepts at much different times.
Determining which level counter your students are and adapting lessons to
meet the many different types you will have in your classroom.
The long process of a child developing their number sense.
Concepts:
Early Numerical Knowledge:
o Number sequence
o One-to-one correspondence
o Cardinality
o Subitizing
Types of Counters:
o Emergent counter, perceptual counter, figurative counter, counting-on
counter, non-count-by-ones counter
Relationships between Numbers:
o Spatial relationships; one and two more, one and two less; anchors or
benchmarks of 5 and 10; part-part-whole relationships
Changes:
Constructing numerical concepts in meaningful ways, not just requiring them
to be memorized in certain amount of time.
Adapt all lessons to the different levels of number sense your children have
accomplished thus far.
Use the four types of number relationships to help you find out where your
children are placing in the math they are learning.
Incorporate numbers with real worlds activities each and every day.

Each child will develop and expand their number knowledge and number
sense at very different rates; we must adapt to each child and encourage them
to learn in different ways.