Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School Journal Article

Moyer, T.O. (2010). Keeping all the trains on the tracks. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, (16)2, 116-121.

Keeping All the Trains on the Tracks
This article begins by explaining how a popular formula, distance=rate x time is commonly taught (and hopefully learned) in an eighth grade mathematics classroom. The author, a teacher explains how the approaches from the textbook typically do not "hook" or get the students attention right away, which there for is a struggle throughout the whole unit. The teacher then explains to the students how this works and gives students "real life" examples. She then sets up the equations and as a class they solve the problems. At this point, the teacher is still explaining the purpose of this and how the equation works. The article continues explaining how having a visual helps many students, and a way to adapt this into a math classroom is to design a chart, or program the equation into a graphing calculator, plug in the data, and then see the line graph that is created from the data. This is a great tool to adopt into a math classroom because it benefits the "visual," "listening," and "do-er" learning. The student has to listen to hear the instructions from the teacher, the students are physically putting in the data, and then the visual of the chart quickly appears on the screen.

I really like this article because it was so "user friendly." The author gave out very clear directions of how to teach this lesson. I also liked how the author included two activities directly related to this topic. This definitely helps teachers, especially new ones to get ideas of how to teach this in a creative and fun way. One thing I know I need to be cautious about if I ever do teach mathematics is to not rely too much on the calculator. It is an excellent tool to have and students should become familiar with a graphing calculator, the only issue is that I would not want students to become so dependent on the calculator that they can only complete math problems using a calculator.