Journal Article: What Math Knowledge Does Teaching Require?

Ball, D.L. & Thames, M.H. (2010). What math knowledge does teaching require? Teaching children mathematics, 17(4), 220-229.

This article was mainly about different ways and techniques to implement in the mathematical classroom. The article has little blurbs that describe how teachers can incorporate visual aids in the classroom. One teacher has a chart that has the numbers 1-100. This helps students with the concept of base ten and finding patterns. Patterns include adding quickly getting the numbers close to the 10's number. The authors also touch on the concept of asking questions to students that really make them think why their answer may or may not be correct. This helps students to fully understand and retain that specific concept of mathematics. One of the toughest concepts for mathematics teachers is figuring if students fully understand the concepts or if the concepts are being missed by students. The article concludes by having the authors explain that teaching mathematics may be a difficult task, but having visuals to help students fully understand the concepts helps and deepens the knowledge of mathematics.

I thought this article was interesting, but very repetitive. All the information was important I thought, but I feel like there have been previous journal articles that have touched on these concepts. What I really enjoyed about this article was that the authors listed frequent tasks of teachers and defined each task. The definitions were short and too the point. After reviewing the tasks, I thought that this was a nice rule of thumb to incorporate in all classes, not just a mathematics classroom. The task that I thought was a great one, but is often overlooked is appraising students' unconventional ideas. Looking back to when I was a student, I think more teachers solely focused on getting the right answer. If you give positive feedback to students who may not have gotten the correct answer, they more likely remember this event and how to correct their errors. This also will make students more comfortable approaching you if they have a question.

After reading this article a way to incorporate some of these tips into my own classroom is to constantly incorporate visual aids into my classroom. More and more students show that they have better learned the material when there are visual aids. I enjoyed how the elementary teacher used the chart to teach base ten numbers and patterns. The numbers are laid out nicely and it is clear to see. I also need to remember to take a break from constantly teaching and make sure each student fully understands one concept before moving onto the next mathematical concept. Overall, even though this was targeted towards a mathematical classroom, I think many of the tips and concepts could be adapted for any type of classroom; which is great because I do not have a job yet, so I don't know what level/content area I am going to teach.