Chris Reid Masters Portfolio Paper April 18, 2015

MATH IS FUN!
Philosophy of Teaching Math

Math is outside
Math can be learned
anywhere, even outside.
Students can learn perimeter
by walking the school yard.
While outside we can count
trees, birds or bugs. Collected
rocks can be categorized by
color, size or shape. Graphs
can be made with data found
while out on the adventure.
Math is more fun outside!

Math is art
My Math Philosophy
Sketching exercises can teach As a teacher, I dream of hearing students say, “I love math!” More
students ratio and proportion.
often, the opposite is true. When it is time for math, I want my
Like engineers and scientist,
students to feel some level of excitement. With today’s
students need to learn to draw
to demonstrate their ideas. My technology there are endless ideas to spice up a daunting math
students will learn how to draw lesson— even if it is allowing students to play a math game after
flesh on their stick figures so completing an assignment.
that their drawings look more
real. Sketching helps students Basic math concepts should be practiced several times a week
learn math. because math is like learning a new language. The more practice
the more secondary it becomes for students. For example, my 2nd
Math is music graders need to practice telling time and adding money on a
regular basis even if it is just one problem per day. My thought is
Music is math because music is
made up of adding, fractions
and counting. I imagine an
occasional need for my
students to listen, dance and
count the beat to a great wake-
up-my-brain song.

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Chris Reid Masters Portfolio Paper April 18, 2015

to do this through a morning journaling exercise. Journals will be

My classroom
“My desire for knowledge is
a combination of writing and drawing. Each journal entry will
include their name, the day’s full date including the day of the
week, the weather and the outside temperature. Each day will
include one question, but I won’t call it a math question. Rather,
the question will reflect a real life experience. A question might
include, “Looking at your journal, what was the average
temperature last week?” Real life questions will include
estimation, proportion, measuring, adding, subtracting, etc. My
experience proves to me that writing and drawing captures details
of the day’s events into long-term memory.

often. But, my desire to bathe my My husband recently told me that he knew what fractions were
head in atmospheres unknown to when he graduated from high school. However, it wasn’t until a
my feet is perennial and construction job, the summer after high school, using a tape
constant” (Thoreau). measure that 7/16 of an inch became very real to him. He was glad
to not be the guy who called 7/16 “one-half inch minus one short
My favorite quote describes my line.” Math will be included in all parts of my day. I believe by
classroom. My classroom will making math fun through games, journaling, and real life
have a huge world map on the situations I will hear, “I love math!”
wall and it will be easy for the
students to access. We will count
countries, continents and oceans.
We will find the tallest mountains
in the world and compare their
heights. The students will learn
which of the mountains Mrs. Reid
has seen or even climbed. During
our journey we will learn where
our many multicultural students
have moved here from.

We will learn how to use the “key”

on the map to convert and
measure distances into miles and
kilometers. We will plan “a trip”
where we will calculate the time
for each leg of the trip. Minutes
will be added and calculated into
hours and then days. What a fun
way to learn math!