I love math. Really. I know many think I'm crazy, but I love how all the puzzle pieces fit together. I love that calculus was created to solve a science problem. But teaching it? Eh, not so much...
All but one year of my teaching career, I have always taught half science and half math. I secretly hated that year. Most students are not fond of math and see no point to learning it. That alone makes math very difficult to teach. On top of that, math has a ton of curriculum to get through in a year (more than in science, I feel), math needs practice and math is very difficult to make real to students.
Although I really try to make math fun and interesting, it doesn't happen all the time. I always feel like math is very routine, and it's very difficult to get out of that rut. This year I genuinely enjoy teaching math. I still teach science for half of my day, but I get excited for math!
The only class I decided to flip this year was my Algebra 1 class- Honors 8th Grade Math. The fact that I get to show my students the connections between the material they are learning and higher mathematics has had an impact on them. They are finding math just as exciting as I once did. I see their wheels turning and their lightbulbs flashing.
The other math classes I teach I have been using books from The Connected Mathematics Project. These books led students to a deeper understanding of concepts and helps to prove things that allow for a more genuine connection. There is one entire book dedicated to discovering the Pythagorean Theorem! It's a great way to introduce younger students to the idea of proving and understanding things that are sometime just thrown at them in other curricula. More about those books later...
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