Week+4

** Standards and Chapter 1 **
====This week included reading chapter one and examining the standards from the National Council for Teachers for Mathematics (NCTM) and Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). At first, I thought this course was going to be challenging because of it being about math and having to understand so many standards. This first chapter made me take a closer look at how the book “Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally” is made up. Even going on the website for the NCTM standards was not difficult to read and explore. A wonderful thing I found in chapter one was the websites that are offered at the end of the chapter. These are not just websites that give ideas for lesson plans or activities in the classroom, but actual websites that students can use for further practice. I discovered some great sites that are interactive and include girly objects, as well as for boys, that can call their attention and they will probably not think that they are doing math! I came upon some really good websites through the NCTM standards webpage as well! I feel the six shifts are part of the mentality teachers should always have for his/her students, especially in math. The shifts describe how an updated classroom should look like with the intention of benefiting the students when learning math. Since there are still traditional classrooms that do not go far and beyond to provide students with more lively activities, these shifts are necessary. Even I was expecting this course to be challenging because math is typically a bit unexciting to teach. Therefore, this is exactly why we should implement the six shifts into our curriculum and turn math into a fun subject. So far, I feel more inspired to teach math because of the resources I am obtaining. ====